OF IDEAS OF TRUTH IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH THOSE OF
BEAUTY AND RELATION.
It cannot but be evident from the above division of the ideas conveyable
by art, that the landscape painter must always have § 1. The two great
ends of landscape painting are the representation of facts and
thoughts.two great and distinct ends; the first, to induce in the
spectator's mind the faithful conception of any natural objects
whatsoever; the second, to guide the spectator's mind to those objects
most worthy of its contemplation, and to inform him of the thoughts and
feelings with which these were regarded by the artist himself.
In attaining the first end, the painter only places the spectator where
he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape and leaves him. The
spectator is alone. He may follow out his own thoughts as he would in
the natural solitude, or he may remain untouched, unreflecting and
regardless, as his disposition may incline him. But he has nothing of
thought given to him, no new ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his
attention or his heart. The artist is his conveyance, not his
companion,—his horse, not his friend. But in attaining the second
end, the artist not only places the spectator, but talks
to him; makes him a sharer in his own strong feelings and quick
thoughts; hurries him away in his own enthusiasm; guides him to all that
is beautiful; snatches him from all that is base, and leaves him more
than delighted,—ennobled and instructed, under the sense of having not
only beheld a new scene, but of having held communion with a new mind,
and having been endowed for a time with the keen perception and the
impetuous emotion of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence.
§ 2. They induce a different choice of material subjects.
Each of these different aims of art will necessitate a different system
of choice of objects to be represented. The first does not indeed imply
choice at all, but it is usually united with the selection of such
objects as may be naturally and constantly pleasing to all men, at all
times; and this selection, when perfect and careful, leads to the
attainment of the pure ideal. But the artist aiming at the second end,
selects his objects for their meaning and character, rather than for
their beauty; and uses them rather to throw light upon the particular
thought he wishes to convey, than as in themselves objects of
unconnected admiration.
§ 3. The first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition.
Now, although the first mode of selection, when guided by deep
reflection, may rise to the production of works possessing a noble and
ceaseless influence on the human mind, it is likely to degenerate into,
or rather, in nine cases out of ten, it never goes beyond, a mere appeal
to such parts of our animal nature as are constant and common—shared by
all, and perpetual in all; such, for instance, as the pleasure of the
eye in the opposition of a cold and warm color, or of a massy form with
a delicate one. It also tends to induce constant repetition of the same
ideas, and reference to the same principles; it gives rise to those
rules of art which properly excited Reynolds's indignation when
applied to its higher efforts; it is the source of, and the apology for,
that host of technicalities and absurdities which in all ages have been
the curse of art and the crown of the connoisseur.
§ 4. The second necessitating variety.
But art, in its second and highest
aim, is not an appeal to constant animal feelings, but an expression and
awakening of individual thought: it is therefore as various
and as extended in its efforts as the compass and grasp of the directing
mind; and we feel, in each of its results, that we are looking, not at a
specimen of a tradesman's wares, of which he is ready to make us a dozen
to match, but at one coruscation of a perpetually active mind, like
which there has not been, and will not be another.
§ 5. Yet the first is delightful to all.
Hence, although there can be no
doubt which of these branches of art is the highest, it is equally
evident that the first will be the most generally felt and appreciated.
For the simple statement of the truths of nature must in itself be
pleasing to every order of mind; because every truth of nature is more
or less beautiful; and if there be just and right selection of the more
important of these truths—based, as above explained, on feelings and
desires common to all mankind—the facts so selected must, in some
degree, be delightful to all, and their value appreciable by all: more
or less, indeed, as their senses and instinct have been rendered more or
less acute and accurate by use and study; but in some degree § 6. The
second only to a few.by all, and in the same way by all. But the highest
art, being based on sensations of peculiar minds, sensations occurring
to them only at particular times, and to a plurality of mankind
perhaps never, and being expressive of thoughts which could only rise
out of a mass of the most extended knowledge, and of dispositions
modified in a thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect—can only be met
and understood by persons having some sort of sympathy with the high and
solitary minds which produced it—sympathy only to be felt by minds in
some degree high and solitary themselves. He alone can appreciate the
art, who could comprehend the conversation of the painter, and share in
his emotion, in moments of his most fiery passion and most original
thought. And whereas the true meaning and end of his art must thus be
sealed to thousands, or misunderstood by them; so also, as he is
sometimes obliged, in working out his own peculiar end, to set at
defiance those constant laws which have arisen out of our lower and
changeless desires, that whose purpose is unseen, is frequently in its
means and parts displeasing.
But this want of extended influence in high art, be it especially
observed, proceeds from no want of truth in the art itself,
but from a want of sympathy in the spectator with those feelings in the
artist which prompt him to the utterance of one truth § 7. The first
necessary to the second.rather than of another. For (and this is what I
wish at present especially to insist upon) although it is possible to
reach what I have stated to be the first end of art, the representation
of facts, without reaching the second, the representation of thoughts,
yet it is altogether impossible to reach the second without having
previously reached the first. I do not say that a man cannot think,
having false basis and material for thought; but that a false thought is
worse than the want of thought, and therefore is not art. And this is
the reason why, though I consider the second as the real and only
important end of all art, I call the representation of facts the first
end; because it is necessary to the other, and must be attained before
it. It is the foundation of all art; like real foundations it may be
little thought of when a brilliant fabric is raised on it; but it must
be there: and as few buildings are beautiful unless every line and
column of their mass have reference to their foundation, and are
suggestive of its existence and strength, so nothing can be beautiful in
art which does not in all its parts suggest and guide to the foundation,
even where no undecorated portion of it is visible; while the noblest
edifices of art are built of such pure and fine crystal that the
foundation may all be seen through them; and then many, while they do
not see what is built upon that first story, yet much admire the
solidity of its brickwork; thinking they understand all that is to be
understood of the matter; while others stand beside them, looking not at
the low story, but up into the heaven at that building of crystal in
which the builder's spirit is dwelling. And thus, though we want the
thoughts and feelings of the artist as well as the truth, yet they must
be thoughts arising out of the knowledge of truth, and feelings raising
out of the contemplation of truth. We do not want his mind to be as
badly blown glass, that distorts what we see through it; but like a
glass of sweet and strange color, that gives new tones to what we see
through it; and a glass of rare strength and clearness too, to let us
see more than we could ourselves, and bring nature up to us and near to
us. Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most brilliant
imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling,
(supposing that feeling could be pure and false at the same time;) not
the most exalted conception, § 8. The exceeding importance of truth.nor
the most comprehensive grasp of intellect, can make amends for the want
of truth, and that for two reasons; first, because falsehood is in
itself revolting and degrading; and secondly, because nature is so
immeasurably superior to all that the human mind can conceive, that
every departure from her is a fall beneath her, so that there can be no
such thing as an ornamental falsehood. All falsehood must be a blot as
well as a sin, an injury as well as a deception.
§ 9. Coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth.
We shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be graceful,
imaginative, or original, unless he be truthful; and that the pursuit of
beauty, instead of leading us away from truth, increases the desire for
it and the necessity of it tenfold; so that those artists who are really
great in imaginative power, will be found to have based their boldness
of conception on a mass of knowledge far exceeding that possessed by
those who pride themselves on its accumulation without regarding its
use. Coldness and want of passion in a picture, are not signs of the
accuracy, but of the paucity of its statements; true vigor and
brilliancy are not signs of audacity, but of knowledge.
§ 10. How truth may be considered a just criterion of all art.
Hence it follows that it is in the power of all, with care and time, to
form something like a just judgment of the relative merits of artists;
for although with respect to the feeling and passion of pictures, it is
often as impossible to criticise as to appreciate, except to such as are
in some degree equal in powers of mind, and in some respects the same in
modes of mind, with those whose works they judge; yet, with respect to
the representation of facts, it is possible for all, by attention, to
form a right judgment of the respective powers and attainments of every
artist. Truth is a bar of comparison at which they may all be examined,
and according to the rank they take in this examination, will almost
invariably be that which, if capable of appreciating them in every
respect, we should be just in assigning them; so strict is the
connection, so constant the relation between the sum of knowledge and the extent of thought, between accuracy of perception and
vividness of idea.
I shall endeavor, therefore, in the present portion of the work, to
enter with care and impartiality into the investigation of the claims of
the schools of ancient and modern landscape to faithfulness in
representing nature. I shall pay no regard whatsoever to what may be
thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative. I shall look only for
truth; bare, clear, downright statement of facts; showing in each
particular, as far as I am able, what the truth of nature is, and then
seeking for the plain expression of it, and for that alone. And I shall
thus endeavor, totally regardless of fervor of imagination or brilliancy
of effect, or any other of their more captivating qualities, to examine
and to judge the works of the great living painter, who is, I believe,
imagined by the majority of the public to paint more falsehood and less
fact than any other known master. We shall see with what reason.
THAT THE TRUTH OF NATURE IS NOT TO BE DISCERNED BY
THE UNEDUCATED SENSES.
It may be here inquired by the reader, with much appearance of reason,
why I think it necessary to devote a separate portion of the work to the
showing of what is truthful in art. "Cannot § 1. The common
self-deception of men with respect to their power of discerning
truth.we," say the public, "see what nature is with our own eyes, and
find out for ourselves what is like her?" It will be as well to
determine this question before we go farther, because if this were
possible, there would be little need of criticism or teaching with
respect to art.
Now I have just said that it is possible for all men, by care and
attention, to form a just judgment of the fidelity of artists to nature.
To do this, no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with
particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does
not in some degree possess,—powers, namely, of observation and
intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought to a high degree of
perfection and acuteness. But until this cultivation has been bestowed,
and until the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in a
consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd as it is
audacious to pretend to form any judgment whatsoever respecting the
truth of art: and my first business, before going a step farther, must
be to combat the nearly universal error of belief among the thoughtless
and unreflecting, that they know either what nature is, or what is like
her, that they can discover truth by instinct, and that their minds are
such pure Venice glass as to be shocked by all treachery. I have to
prove to them that there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of in their philosophy, and that the truth of nature is a part
of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it
is to him who does, infinity.
The first great mistake that people make in the matter, is the
supposition that they must see a thing if it be before their § 2. Men
usually see little of what is before their eyes.veyes. They forget the
great truth told them by Locke, Book ii. chap. 9, § 3:—"This is
certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach
not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if
they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may
burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the
motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat or idea of
pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception. How
often may a man observe in himself, that while his mind is intently
employed in the contemplation of some subjects and curiously surveying
some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sounding
bodies, made upon the organ of hearing, with the same attention that
uses to be for the producing the ideas of sound! A sufficient impulse
there may be on the organ, but it not reaching the observation of the
mind, there follows no perception, and though the motion that uses to
produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard."
And what is here said, which all must feel by their own experience to be
true, is more remarkably and necessarily the case with sight than with
any other of the senses, for this reason, that the ear is not accustomed
to exercise constantly its functions of hearing; it is accustomed to
stillness, and the occurrence of a sound of any kind whatsoever is apt
to awake attention, and be followed with perception, in proportion to
the degree of sound; but the eye, during our waking hours, exercises
constantly its function of seeing; it is its constant habit; we always,
as far as the bodily organ is concerned, see something, and we always
see in the same degree, so that the occurrence of sight, as such, to the
eye, is only the continuance of its necessary state of action, and
awakes no attention whatsoever, except by the particular nature and
quality of the sight. And thus, unless the minds of men are particularly
directed to the impressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before
the eyes without conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so
pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense
of the word, unseen. And numbers of men being pre-occupied with business
or care of some description, totally unconnected with the
impressions of sight, such is actually the case with them, they
receiving from nature only the inevitable sensations of blueness,
redness, darkness, light, etc., and except at particular and rare
moments, no more whatsoever.
§ 3. But more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to
what is beautiful.
The degree of ignorance of external nature in which men
may thus remain, depends, therefore, partly on the number and character
of the subjects with which their minds may be otherwise occupied, and
partly on a natural want of sensibility to the power of beauty of form,
and the other attributes of external objects. I do not think that there
is ever such absolute incapacity in the eye for distinguishing and
receiving pleasure from certain forms and colors, as there is in persons
who are technically said to have no ear, for distinguishing notes, but
there is naturally every degree of bluntness and acuteness, both for
perceiving the truth of form, and for receiving pleasure from it when
perceived. And although I believe even the lowest degree of these
faculties can be expanded almost unlimitedly by cultivation, the
pleasure received rewards not the labor necessary, and the pursuit is
abandoned. So that while in those whose sensations are naturally acute
and vivid, the call of external nature is so strong that it must be
obeyed, and is ever heard louder as the approach to her is nearer,—in
those whose sensations are naturally blunt, the call is overpowered at
once by other thoughts, and their § 4. Connected with a perfect state of
moral feeling.faculties of perception, weak originally, die of disuse.
With this kind of bodily sensibility to color and form is intimately
connected that higher sensibility which we revere as one of the chief
attributes of all noble minds, and as the chief spring of real poetry. I
believe this kind of sensibility may be entirely resolved into the
acuteness of bodily sense of which I have been speaking, associated with
love, love I mean in its infinite and holy functions, as it embraces
divine and human and brutal intelligences, and hallows the physical
perception of external objects by association, gratitude, veneration,
and other pure feelings of our moral nature. And although the discovery
of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and dependent merely on
our powers of physical perception and abstract intellect, wholly
independent of our moral nature, yet these instruments
(perception and judgment) are so sharpened and brightened, and so far
more swiftly and effectively used, when they have the energy and passion
of our moral nature to bring them into action—perception is so
quickened by love, and judgment so tempered by veneration, that,
practically, a man of deadened moral sensation is always dull in his
perception of truth, and thousands of the highest and most divine truths
of nature are wholly concealed from him, however constant and
indefatigable may be his intellectual search. Thus, then, the farther we
look, the more we are limited in the number of those to whom we should
choose to appeal as judges of truth, and the more we perceive how great
a number of mankind may be partially incapacitated from either
discovering or feeling it.
§ 5. And of the intellectual powers.
Next to sensibility, which is
necessary for the perception of facts, come reflection and memory, which
are necessary for the retention of them, and recognition of their
resemblances. For a man may receive impression after impression, and
that vividly and with delight, and yet, if he take no care to reason
upon those impressions and trace them to their sources, he may remain
totally ignorant of the facts that produced them; nay, may attribute
them to facts with which they have no connection, or may coin causes for
them that have no existence at all. And the more sensibility and
imagination a man possesses, the more likely will he be to fall into
error; for then he will see whatever he expects, and admire and judge
with his heart, and not with his eyes. How many people are misled, by
what has been said and sung of the serenity of Italian skies, to suppose
they must be more blue than the skies of the north, and think that
they see them so; whereas, the sky of Italy is far more dull and gray in
color than the skies of the north, and is distinguished only by its
intense repose of light. And this is confirmed by Benvenuto Cellini,
who, I remember, on his first entering France, is especially struck with
the clearness of the sky, as contrasted with the mist of Italy. And
what is more strange still, when people see in a painting what they
suppose to have been the source of their impressions, they will affirm
it to be truthful, though they feel no such impression resulting from
it. Thus, though day after day they may have been impressed
by the tone and warmth of an Italian sky, yet not having traced the
feeling to its source, and supposing themselves impressed by its
blueness, they will affirm a blue sky in a painting to be truthful,
and reject the most faithful rendering of all the real attributes of
Italy as § 6. How sight depends upon previous knowledge.cold or dull.
And this influence of the imagination over the senses, is peculiarly
observable in the perpetual disposition of mankind to suppose that they
see what they know, and vice versa in their not seeing what they
do not know. Thus, if a child be asked to draw the corner of a house, he
will lay down something in the form of the letter T. He has no
conception that the two lines of the roof, which he knows to be level,
produce on his eye the impression of a slope. It requires repeated and
close attention before he detects this fact, or can be made to feel that
the lines on his paper are false. And the Chinese, children in all
things, suppose a good perspective drawing to be as false as we feel
their plate patterns to be, or wonder at the strange buildings which
come to a point at the end. And all the early works, whether of nations
or of men, show, by their want of shade, how little the eye, without
knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover truth. The eye of a Red
Indian, keen enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in
the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions
of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once having been in great danger
from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, which the
untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half a
face. Barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the same want of
actual sight in the early painters of Italy. "The imitations," he
says, "of early art are like those of children—nothing is seen in the
spectacle before us, unless it be previously known and sought for; and
numberless observable differences between the age of ignorance and that
of knowledge, show how much the contraction or extension of our sphere
of vision depends upon other considerations than the mere returns of our
natural optics." And the deception which takes place so broadly in cases
like these, has infinitely greater influence over our judgment of the
more intricate and less tangible truths of nature. We are constantly
supposing that we see what experience only has shown us, or
can show us, to have existence, constantly missing the sight of what we
do not know beforehand to be visible: and painters, to the last hour of
their lives, are apt to fall in some degree into the error of painting
what exists, rather than what they can see. I shall prove the extent of
this error more completely hereafter.
§ 7. The difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature.
Be it also observed, that all these difficulties would lie in the way,
even if the truths of nature were always the same, constantly repeated
and brought before us. But the truths of nature are one eternal
change—one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe
exactly like another bush;—there are no two trees in the forest whose
boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which
could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly
alike. And out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by
long attention only that the conception of the constant character—the
ideal form—hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the
imagination for its standard of truth.
It is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, that the
majority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciating the truth
of nature, when fully set before them; but it is both singular and
disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince them of their own
incapability. Ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all Europe,
the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that
he cannot tell you; and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every
painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and pretend to tell you
whether they are like nature or not. Ask an enthusiastic chatterer in
the Sistine Chapel how many ribs he has, and you get no answer; but it
is odds that you do not get out of the door without his informing you
that he considers such and such a figure badly drawn!
§ 8. We recognize objects by their least important attributes. Compare
Part I., Sect. I., Chap. 4.
A few such interrogations as these might indeed
convict, if not convince the mass of spectators of incapability, were it
not for the universal reply, that they can recognize what they cannot
describe, and feel what is truthful, though they do not know what is
truth. And this is, to a certain degree, true: a man may recognize the
portrait of his friend, though he cannot, if you ask him
apart, tell you the shape of his nose or the height of his forehead; and
every one could tell nature herself from an imitation; why not then, it
will be asked, what is like her from what is not? For this simple
reason, that we constantly recognize things by their least important
attributes, and by help of very few of those, and if these attributes
exist not in the imitation, though there may be thousands of others far
higher and more valuable, yet if those be wanting, or imperfectly
rendered, by which we are accustomed to recognize the object, we deny
the likeness; while if these be given, though all the great and valuable
and important attributes may be wanting, we affirm the likeness.
Recognition is no proof of real and intrinsic resemblance. We recognize
our books by their bindings, though the true and essential
characteristics lie inside. A man is known to his dog by the smell—to
his tailor by the coat—to his friend by the smile: each of these know
him, but how little, or how much, depends on the dignity of the
intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man,
is known only to God. One portrait of a man may possess exact accuracy
of feature, and no atom of expression; it may be, to use the ordinary
terms of admiration bestowed on such portraits by those whom they
please, "as like as it can stare." Everybody, down to his cat, would
know this. Another portrait may have neglected or misrepresented the
features, but may have given the flash of the eye, and the peculiar
radiance of the lip, seen on him only in his hours of highest mental
excitement. None but his friends would know this. Another may have given
none of his ordinary expressions, but one which he wore in the most
excited instant of his life, when all his secret passions and all his
highest powers were brought into play at once. None but those who had
then seen him might recognize this as like. But which would be the
most truthful portrait of the man? The first gives the accidents of
body—the sport of climate, and food, and time—which corruption
inhabits, and the worm waits for. The second gives the stamp of the soul
upon the flesh; but it is the soul seen in the emotions which it shares
with many—which may not be characteristic of its essence—the results
of habit, and education, and accident—a gloze, whether purposely worn
or unconsciously assumed, perhaps totally contrary to all
that is rooted and real in the mind that it conceals. The third has
caught the trace of all that was most hidden and most mighty, when all
hypocrisy, and all habit, and all petty and passing emotion—the ice,
and the bank, and the foam of the immortal river—were shivered, and
broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward strength; when
the call and claim of some divine motive had brought into visible being
those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own volition could
not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend; which God only knew, and
God only could awaken, the depth and the mystery of its peculiar and
separating attributes. And so it is with external Nature: she has a body
and a soul like man; but her soul is the Deity. It is possible to
represent the body without the spirit; and this shall be like to those
whose senses are only cognizant of body. It is possible to represent the
spirit in its ordinary and inferior manifestations; and this shall be
like to those who have not watched for its moments of power. It is
possible to represent the spirit in its secret and high operations; and
this shall be like only to those to whose watching they have been
revealed. All these are truth; but according to the dignity of the
truths he can represent or feel, is the power of the painter,—the
justice of the judge.
OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:—FIRST, THAT
PARTICULAR TRUTHS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN GENERAL
ONES.
I have in the last chapter affirmed that we usually recognize objects by
their least essential characteristics. This very naturally excites the
inquiry what I consider their important § 1. Necessity of determining
the relative importance of truths.characteristics, and why I call one
truth more important than another. And this question must be immediately
determined, because it is evident, that in judging of the truth of
painters, we shall have to consider not only the accuracy with which
individual truths are given, but the relative importance of the truths
themselves; for as it constantly happens that the powers of art are
unable to render all truths, that artist must be considered the most
truthful who has preserved the most important at the expense of the most
trifling.
§ 2. Misapplication of the aphorism: "General truths are more important
than particular ones."
Now if we are to begin our investigation in
Aristotle's way, and look at the
φαινόμενα of the subject, we
shall immediately stumble over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth,
and which, as it is understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is
usually applied in argument, false and misleading. "General truths are
more important than particular ones." Often, when in conversation, I
have been praising Turner for his perpetual variety, and for giving so
particular and separate a character to each of his compositions, that
the mind of the painter can only be estimated by seeing all that he has
ever done, and that nothing can be prophesied of a picture coming into
existence on his easel, but that it will be totally different in idea
from all that he has ever done before; and when I have opposed this
inexhaustible knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the
perpetual repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by Claude
and Poussin, I have been met by the formidable objection, enunciated
with much dignity and self-satisfaction on the part of my
antagonist—"That is not painting general truths, that § 3. Falseness of
this maxim taken without explanation.is painting particular truths." Now
there must be something wrong in that application of a principle which
would make the variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest
sign of intellect in the writer, the greatest sign of error in the
painter; and we shall accordingly see, by an application of it to other
matters, that, taken without limitation, the whole proposition is
utterly false. For instance, Mrs. Jameson somewhere mentions the
exclamation of a lady of her acquaintance, more desirous to fill a pause
in conversation than abundant in sources of observation: "What an
excellent book the Bible is!" This was a very general truth indeed, a
truth predicable of the Bible in common with many other books, but it
certainly is neither striking nor important. Had the lady
exclaimed—"How evidently is the Bible a divine revelation!" she would
have expressed a particular truth, one predicable of the Bible only; but
certainly far more interesting and important. Had she, on the contrary,
informed us that the Bible was a book, she would have been still more
general, and still less entertaining. If I ask any one who somebody else
is, and receive for answer that he is a man, I get little satisfaction
for my pains; but if I am told that he is Sir Isaac Newton, I
immediately thank my neighbor for his § 4. Generality important in the
subject, particularity in the predicate.information. The fact is, and
the above instances may serve at once to prove it if it be not
self-evident, that generality gives importance to the subject, and
limitation or particularity to the predicate. If I say that such and
such a man in China is an opium-eater, I say nothing very interesting,
because my subject (such a man) is particular. If I say that all men in
China are opium-eaters, I say something interesting, because my subject
(all men) is general. If I say that all men in China eat, I say nothing
interesting, because my predicate (eat) is general. If I say that all
men in China eat opium, I say something interesting, because my
predicate (eat opium) is particular.
Now almost everything which (with reference to a given subject) a painter has to ask himself whether he shall represent or not, is a
predicate. Hence in art, particular truths are usually more important
than general ones.
How is it then that anything so plain as this should be contradicted by
one of the most universally received aphorisms respecting art? A little
reflection will show us under what limitations this maxim may be true in
practice.
§ 5. The importance of truths of species is not owing to their
generality.
It is self-evident that when we are painting or describing
anything, those truths must be the most important which are most
characteristic of what is to be told or represented. Now that which is
first and most broadly characteristic of a thing, is that which
distinguishes its genus, or which makes it what it is. For instance,
that which makes drapery be drapery, is not its being made of silk or
worsted or flax, for things are made of all these which are not drapery,
but the ideas peculiar to drapery; the properties which, when inherent
in a thing, make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexibility,
unity and comparative thinness. Everything which has these properties, a
waterfall, for instance, if united and extended, or a net of weeds over
a wall, is drapery, as much as silk or woollen stuff is. So that these
ideas separate drapery in our minds from everything else; they are
peculiarly characteristic of it, and therefore are the most important
group of ideas connected with it; and so with everything else, that
which makes the thing what it is, is the most important idea, or group
of ideas connected with the thing. But as this idea must necessarily be
common to all individuals of the species it belongs to, it is a general
idea with respect to that species; while other ideas, which are not
characteristic of the species, and are therefore in reality general, (as
black or white are terms applicable to more things than drapery,) are
yet particular with respect to that species, being predicable only of
certain individuals of it. Hence it is carelessly and falsely said, that
general ideas are more important than particular ones; carelessly and
falsely, I say, because the so-called general idea is important, not
because it is common to all the individuals of that species, but because
it separates that species from everything else. It is the
distinctiveness, not the universality of the truth, which renders it
important. And the so-called particular idea is unimportant,
not because it is not predicable of the whole species, but because it
is predicable of things out of that species. It is not its
individuality, but its § 6. All truths valuable as they are
characteristic.generality which renders it unimportant. So, then, truths
are important just in proportion as they are characteristic, and are
valuable, primarily, as they separate the species from all other created
things secondarily, as they separate the individuals of that species
from one another: thus "silken" or "woollen" are unimportant ideas with
respect to drapery, because they neither separate the species from other
things, nor even the individuals of that species from one another,
since, though not common to the whole of it, they are common to
indefinite numbers of it; but the particular folds into which any piece
of drapery may happen to fall, being different in many particulars from
those into which any other piece of drapery will fall, are expressive
not only of the characters of the species, flexibility, (non-elasticity,
etc.,) but of individuality and definite character in the case
immediately observed, and are consequently most important and necessary
ideas. So in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed or anything else of
accidental quality, does not distinguish him from other short-legged or
long-nosed animals; but the important truths respecting a man are,
first, the marked development of that distinctive organization which
separates him as man from other animals, and secondly, that group of
qualities which distinguish the individual from all other men, which
make him Paul or Judas, Newton or Shakspeare.
§ 7. Otherwise truths of species are valuable because beautiful.
Such
are the real sources of importance in truths as far as they are
considered with reference merely to their being general, or particular;
but there are other sources of importance which give farther weight to
the ordinary opinion of the greater value of those which are general,
and which render this opinion right in practice; I mean the intrinsic
beauty of the truths themselves, a quality which it is not here the
place to investigate, but which must just be noticed, as invariably
adding value to truths of species rather than to those of individuality.
The qualities and properties which characterize man or any other animal
as a species, are the perfection of his or its form of mind, almost all
individual differences arising from imperfections; hence a
truth of species is the more valuable to art, because it must always be
a beauty, while a truth of individuals is commonly, in some sort or way,
a defect.
§ 8. And many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in
connection with others.
Again, a truth which may be of great interest,
when an object is viewed by itself, may be objectionable when it is
viewed in relation to other objects. Thus if we were painting a piece of
drapery as our whole subject, it would be proper to give in it every
source of entertainment, which particular truths could supply, to give
it varied color and delicate texture; but if we paint this same piece of
drapery, as part of the dress of a Madonna, all these ideas of richness
or texture become thoroughly contemptible, and unfit to occupy the mind
at the same moment with the idea of the Virgin. The conception of
drapery is then to be suggested by the simplest and slightest means
possible, and all notions of texture and detail are to be rejected with
utter reprobation; but this, observe, is not because they are particular
or general or anything else, with respect to the drapery itself, but
because they draw the attention to the dress instead of the saint, and
disturb and degrade the imagination and the feelings; hence we ought to
give the conception of the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible,
by rendering those essential qualities distinctly, which are necessary
to the very existence of drapery, and not one more.
With these last two sources of the importance of truths, we have nothing
to do at present, as they are dependent upon ideas of beauty and
relation: I merely allude to them now, to show that all that is alleged
by Sir J. Reynolds and other scientific writers respecting the kind of
truths proper to be represented by the painter or sculptor is perfectly
just and right; while yet the principle on which they base their
selection (that general truths are more important than particular ones)
is altogether false. Canova's Perseus in the Vatican is entirely spoiled
by an unlucky tassel in the folds of the mantle (which the next
admirer of Canova who passes would do well to knock off;) but it is
spoiled not because this is a particular truth, but because it is a
contemptible, unnecessary, and ugly truth. The button which fastens the
vest of the Sistine Daniel is as much a particular truth as
this, but it is a necessary one, and the idea of it is given by the
simplest possible means; hence it is right and beautiful.
Finally, then, it is to be remembered that all truths as far § 9.
Recapitulation.as their being particular or general affects their value
at all, are valuable in proportion as they are particular, and valueless
in proportion as they are general; or to express the proposition in
simpler terms, every truth is valuable in proportion as it is
characteristic of the thing of which it is affirmed.
OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:—SECONDLY, THAT
RARE TRUTHS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FREQUENT ONES.
It will be necessary next for us to determine how far frequency § 1. No
accidental violation of nature's principles should be represented.or
rarity can affect the importance of truths, and whether the artist is to
be considered the most truthful who paints what is common or what is
unusual in nature.
Now the whole determination of this question depends upon whether the
unusual fact be a violation of nature's general principles, or the
application of some of those principles in a peculiar and striking way.
Nature sometimes, though very rarely, violates her own principles; it is
her principle to make everything beautiful, but now and then, for an
instant, she permits what, compared with the rest of her works, might be
called ugly; it is true that even these rare blemishes are permitted, as
I have above said, for a good purpose, (Part I. Sec. I. Chap. 5,) they
are valuable in nature, and used as she uses them, are equally valuable
(as instantaneous discords) in art; but the artist who should seek after
these exclusively, and paint nothing else, though he might be able to
point to something in nature as the original of every one of his
uglinesses, would yet be, in the strict sense of the word, false,—false
to nature, and disobedient to her laws. For instance, it is the practice
of nature to give character to the outlines of her clouds, by perpetual
angles and right lines. Perhaps once in a month, by diligent watching,
we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and made up of
curves; but the artist who paints nothing but curved clouds must yet be
considered thoroughly and inexcusably false.
But the case is widely different, when instead of a principle
violated, we have one extraordinarily carried out or manifested § 2. But
the cases in which those principles have been strikingly
exemplified.under unusual circumstances. Though nature is constantly
beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly,
for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary
to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest
touches are things which must be watched for; her most § 3. Which are
comparatively rare.perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent.
She is constantly doing something beautiful for us, but it is something
which she has not done before and will not do again; some exhibition of
her general powers in particular circumstances which, if we do not catch
at the instant it is passing, will not be repeated for us. Now they are
these evanescent passages of perfected beauty, these perpetually varied
examples of utmost power, which the artist ought to seek for and arrest.
No supposition can be more absurd than that effects or truths frequently
exhibited are more characteristic of nature than those which are equally
necessary by her laws, though rarer in occurrence. Both the frequent and
the rare are parts of the same great system; to give either exclusively
is imperfect truth, and to repeat the same effect or § 4. All repetition
is blamable.thought in two pictures is wasted life. What should we think
of a poet who should keep all his life repeating the same thought in
different words? and why should we be more lenient to the parrot-painter
who has learned one lesson from the page of nature, and keeps stammering
it out with eternal repetition without turning the leaf? Is it less
tautology to describe a thing over and over again with lines, than it is
with words? The teaching of nature is as varied and infinite as it is
constant; and the duty of the painter is to watch for every one of her
lessons, and to give (for human life will admit of nothing more) those
in which she has manifested each of her principles in the most peculiar
and striking way. The deeper his research and the rarer the phenomena he
has noted, the more valuable will his works be; to repeat himself, even
in a single instance, is treachery to nature, for a thousand human lives
would not be enough to give one instance of the perfect manifestation of
each of her powers; and as for combining or classifying them, as well
might a preacher expect in one sermon to express and explain
every divine truth which can be gathered out of God's revelation, as a
painter expect in § 5. The duty of the painter is the same as that of a
preacher.one composition to express and illustrate every lesson which
can be received from God's creation. Both are commentators on infinity,
and the duty of both is to take for each discourse one essential truth,
seeking particularly and insisting especially on those which are less
palpable to ordinary observation, and more likely to escape an indolent
research; and to impress that, and that alone, upon those whom they
address, with every illustration that can be furnished by their
knowledge, and every adornment attainable by their power. And the real
truthfulness of the painter is in proportion to the number and variety
of the facts he has so illustrated; those facts being always, as above
observed, the realization, not the violation of a general principle. The
quantity of truth is in proportion to the number of such facts, and its
value and instructiveness in proportion to their rarity. All really
great pictures, therefore, exhibit the general habits of nature,
manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way.
OF THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF TRUTHS:—THIRDLY, THAT
TRUTHS OF COLOR ARE THE LEAST IMPORTANT OF ALL TRUTHS.
In the two last chapters, we have pointed out general tests § 1.
Difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies.of the
importance of all truths, which will be sufficient at once to
distinguish certain classes of properties in bodies, as more necessary
to be told than others, because more characteristic, either of the
particular thing to be represented, or of the principles of nature.
According to Locke, Book ii. chap. 8, there are three sorts of qualities
in bodies: first, the "bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or
rest of their solid parts: those that are in them, whether we perceive
them or not." These he calls primary qualities. Secondly, "the power
that is in any body to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our
senses," (sensible qualities.) And thirdly, "the power that is in any
body to make such a change in another body as that it shall operate on
our senses differently from what it did before: these last being usually
called powers."
Hence he proceeds to prove that those which he calls primary qualities
are indeed part of the essence of the body, and characteristic of it;
but that the two other kinds of qualities which together he calls
secondary, are neither of them more than powers of producing on other
objects, or in us, certain effects § 2. The first are fully
characteristic, the second imperfectly so.and sensations. Now a power of
influence is always equally characteristic of two objects—the active
and passive; for it is as much necessary that there should be a power in
the object suffering to receive the impression, as in the object acting
to give the impression. (Compare Locke, Book ii. chap. 21, sect. 2.) For
supposing two people, as is frequently the case, perceive different
scents in the same flower, it is evident that the power in
the flower to give this or that depends on the nature of their nerves,
as well as on that of its own particles; and that we are as correct in
saying it is a power in us to perceive, as in the object to impress.
Every power, therefore, being characteristic of the nature of two
bodies, is imperfectly and incompletely characteristic of either
separately; but the primary qualities, being characteristic only of the
body in which they are inherent, are the most important truths connected
with it. For the question, what the thing is, must precede, and be of
more importance than the question, what can it do.
§ 3. Color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form.
Now by Locke's definition above given, only bulk, figure, situation, and
motion or rest of solid parts, are primary qualities. Hence all truths
of color sink at once into the second rank. He, therefore, who has
neglected a truth of form for a truth of color, has neglected a greater
truth for a less one.
And that color is indeed a most unimportant characteristic of objects,
will be farther evident on the slightest consideration. The color of
plants is constantly changing with the season, and of everything with
the quality of light falling on it; but the nature and essence of the
thing are independent of these changes. An oak is an oak, whether green
with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be
yellow or crimson; and if some monster-hunting botanist should ever
frighten the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia; but let one curve
of the petals—one groove of the stamens be wanting, and the flower
ceases to be the same. Let the roughness of the bark and the angles of
the boughs be smoothed or diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak;
but let it retain its inward structure and outward form, and though its
leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tri-color, it would be a white
oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but an § 4. Color no
distinction between objects of the same species.oak still. Again, color
is hardly ever even a possible distinction between two objects of the
same species. Two trees, of the same kind, at the same season, and of
the same age, are of absolutely the same color; but they are not of the
same form, nor anything like it. There can be no difference in the color
of two pieces of rock broken from the same place; but it is impossible
they should be of the same form. So that form is not only the
chief characteristic of species, but the only characteristic of
individuals of a species.
§ 5. And different in association from what it is alone.
Again, a color,
in association with other colors, is different from the same color seen
by itself. It has a distinct and peculiar power upon the retina
dependent on its association. Consequently, the color of any object is
not more dependent upon the nature of the object itself, and the eye
beholding it, than on the color of the objects near it; in this respect
also, therefore, it is no characteristic.
§ 6. It is not certain whether any two people see the same color in
things.
And so great is the uncertainty with respect to those qualities
or powers which depend as much on the nature of the object suffering as
of the object acting, that it is totally impossible to prove that one
man sees in the same thing the same color that another does though he
may use the same name for it. One man may see yellow where another sees
blue, but as the effect is constant, they agree in the term to be used
for it, and both call it blue, or both yellow, having yet totally
different ideas attached to the term. And yet neither can be said to see
falsely, because the color is not in the thing, but in the thing and
them together. But if they see forms differently, one must see falsely,
because the form is positive in the object. My friend may see boars blue
for anything I know, but it is impossible he should see them with paws
instead of hoofs, unless his eyes or brain are diseased. (Compare Locke,
Book ii. chap. xxxii. § 15.) But I do not speak of this uncertainty as
capable of having any effect on art, because, though perhaps Landseer
sees dogs of the color which I should call blue, yet the color he puts
on the canvas, being in the same way blue to him, will still be brown or
dog-color to me; and so we may argue on points of color just as if all
men saw alike, as indeed in all probability they do; but I merely
mention this uncertainty to show farther the vagueness and unimportance
of color as a characteristic of bodies.
§ 7. Form considered as an element of landscape, includes light and
shade.
Before going farther, however, I must explain the sense in which
I have used the word "form," because painters have a most inaccurate and
careless habit of confining the term to the outline of bodies, whereas
it necessarily implies light and shade. It is true that the outline and
the chiaroscuro must be separate subjects of investigation
with the student; but no form whatsoever can be known to the eye in the
slightest degree without its chiaroscuro; and, therefore, in speaking of
form generally as an element of landscape, I mean that perfect and
harmonious unity of outline with light and shade, by which all the parts
and projections and proportions of a body are fully explained to the
eye, being nevertheless perfectly independent of sight or power in other
objects, the presence of light upon a body being a positive existence,
whether we are aware of it or not, and in no degree dependent upon our
senses. This being understood, the most § 8. Importance of light and
shade in expressing the character of bodies and unimportance of color.
convincing proof of the unimportance of color lies in the accurate
observation of the way in which any material object impresses itself on
the mind. If we look at nature carefully, we shall find that her colors
are in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her
forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and
speaking. The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from
the boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground;
every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of
the sky or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this
local color, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and
modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray of the shadow;
and the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great, that were
we left to find out what objects were by their colors only, we would
scarcely in places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond
them, or the ground beneath them. I know that people unpractised in art
will not believe this at first; but if they have accurate powers of
observation, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find
that, while they can scarcely ever determine the exact hue of
anything, except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or
the blue sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided
and evident, and the source of the chief character of every object.
Light and shade indeed so completely conquer the distinctions of local
color, that the difference in hue between the illumined parts of a white
and black object is not so great as the difference (in sunshine) between
the illumined and dark side of either separately.
We shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, that
color, even as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared to form; § 9.
Recapitulation.but this we cannot insist upon at present; we have only
to do with simple truth, and the observations we have made are
sufficient to prove that the artist who sacrifices or forgets a truth of
form in the pursuit of a truth of color, sacrifices what is definite to
what is uncertain, and what is essential to what is accidental.
RECAPITULATION.
It ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that those
are always most valuable which are most historical, § 1. The importance
of historical truths.that is, which tell us most about the past and
future states of the object to which they belong. In a tree, for
instance, it is more important to give the appearance of energy and
elasticity in the limbs which is indicative of growth and life, than any
particular character of leaf, or texture of bough. It is more important
that we should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and
higher into the sky, and be impressed with the current of life and
motion which is animating every fibre, than that we should know the
exact pitch of relief with which those fibres are thrown out against the
sky. For the first truths tell us tales about the tree, about what it
has been, and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only in
its present state, and are in no way talkative about themselves.
Talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than
silent ones. So again the lines in a crag which mark its stratification,
and how it has been washed and rounded by water, or twisted and drawn
out in fire, are more important, because they tell more than the stains
of the lichens which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of
frost or decomposition; not but that both of these are historical, but
historical in a less distinct manner, and for shorter periods.
§ 2. Form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths.
Tone, light and color are secondary.
Hence in general the truths of
specific form are the first and most important of all; and next to them,
those truths of chiaroscuro which are necessary to make us understand
every quality and part of forms, and the relative distances of objects
among each other, and in consequence their relative bulks. Altogether
lower than these, as truths, though often most important as
beauties, stand all effects of chiaroscuro which are productive merely
of imitations of light and tone, and all effects of color. To make us
understand the space of the sky, is an end worthy of the artist's
highest powers; to hit its particular blue or gold is an end to be
thought of when we have accomplished the first, and not till then.
§ 3. And deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all.
Finally, far below all
these come those particular accuraciesor tricks of chiaroscuro which
cause objects to look projecting from the canvas, not worthy of the name
of truths, because they require for their attainment the sacrifice of
all others; for not having at our disposal the same intensity of light
by which nature illustrates her objects, we are obliged, if we would
have perfect deception in one, to destroy its relation to the rest.
(Compare Sect. II. chap. V.) And thus he who throws one object out of
his picture, never lets the spectator into it. Michael Angelo bids you
follow his phantoms into the abyss of heaven, but a modern French
painter drops his hero out of the picture frame.
This solidity or projection then, is the very lowest truth that art can
give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as food for the eye
which is properly only the subject of touch; it can neither instruct nor
exalt, nor please except as jugglery; it addresses no sense of beauty
nor of power; and wherever it characterizes the general aim of a
picture, it is the sign and the evidence of the vilest and lowest
mechanism which art can be insulted by giving name to.
GENERAL APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES.
We have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was before
asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imitation § 1. The
different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at imitation
or at truth.are not only few, but of the very lowest order. We thus find
painters ranging themselves into two great classes; one aiming at the
development of the exquisite truths of specific form, refined color, and ethereal
space, and content with the clear and impressive suggestion of any of
these, by whatsoever means obtained; and the other casting all these
aside, to attain those particular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, which
may trick the spectator into a belief of reality. The first class, if
they have to paint a tree, are intent upon giving the exquisite designs
of intersecting undulation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the
intricacy of its organization, and all those qualities which make it
lovely or affecting of its kind. The second endeavor only to make you
believe that you are looking at wood. They are totally regardless of
truths or beauties of form; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their
purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition
that it is a stump and not canvas.
§ 2. The old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation.
To which of
these classes the great body of the old landscape painters belonged, may
be partly gathered from the kind of praise which is bestowed upon them
by those who admire them most, which either refers to technical matters,
dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color, etc., or is bestowed on
the power of the painter to deceive. M. de Marmontel, going into a
connoisseur's gallery, pretends to mistake a fine Berghem for a window.
This, he says, was affirmed by its possessor to be the greatest praise
the picture had ever received. Such is indeed the notion of
art which is at the bottom of the veneration usually felt for the old
landscape painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea of
ignorance; it is the only notion which people unacquainted with art can
by any possibility have of its ends; the only test by which people
unacquainted with nature can pretend to form anything like judgment of
art. It is strange that, with the great historical painters of Italy
before them, who had broken so boldly and indignantly from the trammels
of this notion, and shaken the very dust of it from their feet, the
succeeding landscape painters should have wasted their lives in
jugglery: but so it is, and so it will be felt, the more we look into
their § 3. What truths they gave.works, that the deception of the senses
was the great and first end of all their art. To attain this they paid
deep and serious attention to effects of light and tone, and to the
exact degree of relief which material objects take against light and
atmosphere; and sacrificing every other truth to these, not necessarily,
but because they required no others for deception, they succeeded in
rendering these particular facts with a fidelity and force which, in the
pictures that have come down to us uninjured, are as yet unequalled, and
never can be surpassed. They painted their foregrounds with laborious
industry, covering them with details so as to render them deceptive to
the ordinary eye, regardless of beauty or truth in the details
themselves; they painted their trees with careful attention to their
pitch of shade against the sky, utterly regardless of all that is
beautiful or essential in the anatomy of their foliage and boughs: they
painted their distances with exquisite use of transparent color and
aerial tone, totally neglectful of all facts and forms which nature uses
such color and tone to relieve and adorn. They had neither love of
nature, nor feeling of her beauty; they looked for her coldest and most
commonplace effects, because they were easiest to imitate; and for her
most vulgar forms, because they were most easily to be recognized by the
untaught eyes of those whom alone they could hope to please; they did
it, like the Pharisee of old, to be seen of men, and they had their
reward. They do deceive and delight the unpractised eye; they will to
all ages, as long as their colors endure, be the standards of excellence
with all, who, ignorant of nature, claim to be thought learned in art.
And they will to all ages be, to those who have thorough love
and knowledge of the creation which they libel, instructive proofs of
the limited number and low character of the truths which are necessary,
and the accumulated multitude of pure, broad, bold falsehoods which are
admissible in pictures meant only to deceive.
There is of course more or less accuracy of knowledge and execution
combined with this aim at effect, according to the industry and
precision of eye possessed by the master, and more or less of beauty in
the forms selected, according to his natural taste; but both the beauty
and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where they interfere with the
great effort at deception. Claude had, if it had been cultivated, a fine
feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom ungraceful in his foliage; but
his picture, when examined with reference to essential truth, is one
mass of error from beginning to end. Cuyp, on the other hand, could
paint close truth of everything, except ground and water, with decision
and success, but he has no sense of beauty. Gaspar Poussin, more
ignorant of truth than Claude, and almost as dead to beauty as Cuyp, has
yet a perception of the feeling and moral truth of nature which often
redeems the picture; but yet in all of them, everything that they can do
is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of what they are
painting.
§ 4. The principles of selection adopted by modern artists.
Modern
landscape painters have looked at nature with totally different eyes,
seeking not for what is easiest to imitate, but for what is most
important to tell. Rejecting at once all idea of bona fide imitation,
they think only of conveying the impression of nature into the mind of
the spectator. And there is, in consequence, a greater sum of valuable,
essential, and impressive truth in the works of two or three of our
leading modern landscape painters, than in those of all the old masters
put together, and of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or
avoidable falsehood; while the unimportant and feeble truths of the old
masters are choked with a mass of perpetual defiance of the most
authoritative laws of nature.
I do not expect this assertion to be believed at present; it must rest
for demonstration on the examination we are about to enter upon; yet,
even without reference to any intricate or deep-laid truths,
it appears strange to me, that any one familiar with nature, and fond of
her, should not grow weary and sick § 5. General feeling of Claude,
Salvator, and G. Poussin, contrasted with the freedom and vastness of
nature.at heart among the melancholy and monotonous transcripts of her
which alone can be received from the old school of art. A man accustomed
to the broad, wild seashore, with its bright breakers, and free winds,
and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can
scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on some paltry,
chipped and chiselled quay with porters and wheelbarrows running against
him, to watch a weak, rippling bound and barriered water, that has not
strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the
wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone. A man
accustomed to the strength and glory of God's mountains, with their
soaring and radiant pinnacles, and surging sweeps of measureless
distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and climates upon their crests, can
scarcely but be angered when Salvator bids him stand still under some
contemptible fragment of splintery crag, which an Alpine snow-wreath
would smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two growing out
of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke for a sky. A man accustomed to
the grace and infinity of nature's foliage, with every vista a
cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can scarcely but be angered
when Poussin mocks him with a black round mass of impenetrable paint,
diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and supported on a stick
instead of a trunk. The fact is, there is one thing wanting in all the
doing of these men, and that is the very virtue by which the work of
human mind chiefly rises above that of the Daguerreotype or Calotype, or
any other mechanical means that ever have been or may be invented, Love:
There is no evidence of their ever having gone to nature with any
thirst, or received from her such emotion as could make them, even for
an instant, lose sight of themselves; there is in them neither
earnestness nor humility; there is no simple or honest record of any
single truth; none of the plain words nor straight efforts that men
speak and make when they once feel.
Nor is it only by the professed landscape painters that the great
verities of the material world are betrayed: Grand as are the
motives of landscape in the works of the earlier and mightier men, there
is yet in them nothing approaching to a general § 6. Inadequacy of the
landscape of Titian and Tintoret.view nor complete rendering of natural
phenomena; not that they are to be blamed for this; for they took out of
nature that which was fit for their purpose, and their mission was to do
no more; but we must be cautious to distinguish that imaginative
abstraction of landscape which alone we find in them, from the entire
statement of truth which has been attempted by the moderns. I have said
in the chapter on symmetry in the second volume, that all landscape
grandeur vanishes before that of Titian and Tintoret; and this is true
of whatever these two giants touched;—but they touched little. A few
level flakes of chestnut foliage; a blue abstraction of hill forms from
Cadore or the Euganeans; a grand mass or two of glowing ground and
mighty herbage, and a few burning fields of quiet cloud were all they
needed; there is evidence of Tintoret's having felt more than this, but
it occurs only in secondary fragments of rock, cloud, or pine, hardly
noticed among the accumulated interest of his human subject. From the
window of Titian's house at Venice, the chain of the Tyrolese Alps is
seen lifted in spectral power above the tufted plain of Treviso; every
dawn that reddens the towers of Murano lights also a line of pyramidal
fires along that colossal ridge; but there is, so far as I know, no
evidence in any of the master's works of his ever having beheld, much
less felt, the majesty of their burning. The dark firmament and saddened
twilight of Tintoret are sufficient for their end; but the sun never
plunges behind San Giorgio in Aliga without such retinue of radiant
cloud, such rest of zoned light on the green lagoon, as never received
image from his hand. More than this, of that which they loved and
rendered much is rendered conventionally; by noble conventionalities
indeed, but such nevertheless as would be inexcusable if the landscape
became the principal subject instead of an accompaniment. I will
instance only the San Pietro Martire, which, if not the most perfect, is
at least the most popular of Titian's landscapes; in which, to obtain
light on the flesh of the near figures the sky is made as dark as deep
sea, the mountains are laid in with violent and impossible blue, except
one of them on the left, which, to connect the distant light
with the foreground, is thrown into light relief, unexplained by its
materials, unlikely in its position, and in its degree impossible under
any circumstances.
§ 7. Causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools.
I do not
instance these as faults in the picture: there are no works of very
powerful color which are free from conventionality concentrated or
diffused, daring or disguised; but as the conventionality of this whole
picture is mainly thrown into the landscape, it is necessary, while we
acknowledge the virtue of this distance as a part of the great
composition, to be on our guard against the license it assumes and the
attractiveness of its overcharged color. Fragments of far purer truth
occur in the works of Tintoret; and in the drawing of foliage, whether
rapid or elaborate, of masses or details, the Venetian painters, taken
as a body, may be considered almost faultless models. But the whole
field of what they have done is so narrow, and therein is so much of
what is only relatively right, and in itself false or imperfect, that
the young and inexperienced painter could run no greater risk than the
too early taking them for teachers; and to the general spectator their
landscape is valuable rather as a means of peculiar and solemn emotion
than as ministering to, or inspiring the universal love of nature. Hence
while men of serious mind, especially those whose pursuits have brought
them into continued relations with the peopled rather than the lonely
world, will always look to the Venetian painters as having touched those
simple chords of landscape harmony which are most in unison with earnest
and melancholy feeling; those whose philosophy is more cheerful and more
extended, as having been trained and colored among simple and solitary
nature, will seek for a wider and more systematic circle of teaching:
they may grant that the barred horizontal gloom of the Titian sky, and
the massy leaves of the Titian forest are among the most sublime of the
conceivable forms of material things; but they know that the virtue of
these very forms is to be learned only by right comparison of them with
the cheerfulness, fulness and comparative inquietness of other hours and
scenes; that they are not intended for the continual food, but the
occasional soothing of the human heart; that there is a lesson of not
less value in its place, though of less concluding and
sealing authority, in every one of the more humble phases of material
things: and that there are some lessons of equal or greater authority
which these masters neither taught nor received. And until the school of
modern landscape arose Art had never noted the links of this mighty
chain; it mattered not that a fragment lay here and there, no heavenly
lightning could descend by it; the landscape of the Venetians was
without effect on any contemporary in subsequent schools; it still
remains on the continent as useless as if it had never existed; and at
this moment German and Italian landscapes, of which no words are
scornful enough to befit the utter degradation, hang in the Venetian
Academy in the next room to the Desert of Titian and the Paradise of
Tintoret.[6]
§ 8. The value of inferior works of art how to be estimated.
That then
which I would have the reader inquire respecting every work of art of
undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, is not whether it be a
work of especial grandeur, importance, or power; but whether it have
any virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth, whether it
have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown, whether it have
added one single stone to our heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark
bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our path. This, if it be an
honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked
honestly without giving some such help to his race. God appoints to
every one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it
honorably, if they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that
light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching
influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its
appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service
constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but
the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is
peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a gift also
to his race forever—
"Fool not," says George Herbert,
"For all may have,
If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave."
If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if
there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an
envious or powerless imitation of other men's labors, if it be a display
of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode
it show itself as having its origin in vanity,—Cast it out. It matters
not what powers of mind may have been concerned or corrupted in it, all
have lost their savor, it is worse than worthless;—perilous—Cast it
out.
Works of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty being more
or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the painter, by his
vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice; (the fear of doing right has far
more influence on art than is commonly thought,) that only is altogether
to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle, and cowardly. Of the rest
the rank is to be estimated rather by the purity of their metal than the
coined value of it.
§ 9. Religious landscape of Italy. The admirableness of its completion.
Keeping these principles in view, let us endeavor to obtain something
like a general view of the assistance which has been rendered to our
study of nature by the various occurrences of landscape in elder art,
and by the more exclusively directed labors of modern schools.
To the ideal landscape of the early religious painters of Italy I have
alluded in the concluding chapter of the second volume. It is absolutely
right and beautiful in its peculiar application; but its grasp of nature
is narrow and its treatment in most respects too severe and conventional
to form a profitable example when the landscape is to be alone the
subject of thought. The great virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and
humble realization of those objects it selects; in this respect
differing from such German imitations of it as I have met with, that
there is no effort of any fanciful or ornamental modifications, but
loving fidelity to the thing studied. The foreground plants
are usually neither exaggerated nor stiffened; they do not form arches
or frames or borders; their grace is unconfined, their simplicity
undestroyed. Cima da Conegliano, in his picture in the church of the
Madonna dell' Orto at Venice, has given us the oak, the fig, the
beautiful "Erba della Madonna" on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it
as may be seen growing at this day on the marble steps of that very
church; ivy and other creepers, and a strawberry plant in the
foreground, with a blossom and a berry just set, and one half ripe and
one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, and
therefore most divine. Fra Angelico's use of the oxalis acetosella is as
faithful in representation as touching in feeling.[7] The ferns that
grow on the walls of Fiesole may be seen in their simple verity on the
architecture of Ghirlandajo. The rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the
olive and orange, pomegranate and vine, have received their fairest
portraiture where they bear a sacred character; even the common
plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with deep reverence by
Raffaelle; and indeed for the perfect treatment of details of this kind,
treatment as delicate and affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it
is to the works of these schools alone that we can refer. And on this
their peculiar excellence I should the more earnestly insist, because it
is of a kind altogether neglected by the English school, and with most
unfortunate result, many of our best painters missing their deserved
rank solely from the want of it, as Gainsborough; and all being more or
less checked in their progress or vulgarized in their aim.
§ 10. Finish, and the want of it, how right and how wrong.
It is a
misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any quality of art is
independently to be praised, and without reference to the motive from
which it resulted, and the place in which it appears; so that no
principle can be simply enforced but it shall seem to countenance a
vice; while the work of qualification and explanation both weakens the
force of what is said, and is not perhaps always likely to be with
patience received: so also those who desire to misunderstand
or to oppose have it always in their power to become obtuse listeners or
specious opponents. Thus I hardly dare insist upon the virtue of
completion, lest I should be supposed a defender of Wouvermans or Gerard
Dow; neither can I adequately praise the power of Tintoret, without
fearing to be thought adverse to Holbein or Perugino. The fact is, that
both finish and impetuosity, specific minuteness, or large abstraction,
may be the signs of passion, or of its reverse; may result from
affection or indifference, intellect or dulness. Some men finish from
intense love of the beautiful in the smallest parts of what they do;
others in pure incapability of comprehending anything but parts; others
to show their dexterity with the brush, and prove expenditure of time.
Some are impetuous and bold in their handling, from having great
thoughts to express which are independent of detail; others because they
have bad taste or have been badly taught; others from vanity, and others
from indolence. (Compare Vol. II. Chap. IX. § 8.) Now both the finish
and incompletion are right where they are the signs of passion or of
thought, and both are wrong, and I think the finish the more
contemptible of the two, when they cease to be so. The modern Italians
will paint every leaf of a laurel or rose-bush without the slightest
feeling of their beauty or character; and without showing one spark of
intellect or affection from beginning to end. Anything is better than
this; and yet the very highest schools do the same thing, or nearly
so, but with totally different motives and perceptions, and the result
is divine. On the whole, I conceive that the extremes of good and evil
lie with the finishers, and that whatever glorious power we may admit in
men like Tintoret, whatever attractiveness of method to Rubens,
Rembrandt, or, though in far less degree, our own Reynolds, still the
thoroughly great men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and
who, in a word, have never despised anything, however small, of God's
making. And this is the chief fault of our English landscapists, that
they have not the intense all-observing penetration of well-balanced
mind; they have not, except in one or two instances, anything of that
feeling which Wordsworth shows in the following lines:—
"So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive;—
Would that the little flowers were born to live
Conscious of half the pleasure which they give.
That to this mountain daisy's self were known
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown
On the smooth surface of this naked stone."
That is a little bit of good, downright, foreground painting—no mistake
about it; daisy, and shadow, and stone texture and all. Our painters
must come to this before they have done their duty; and yet, on the
other hand, let them beware of finishing, for the sake of finish, all
over their picture. The ground is not to be all over daisies, nor is
every daisy to have its star-shaped shadow; there is as much finish in
the right concealment of things as in the right exhibition of them; and while I demand this
amount of specific character where nature shows it, I demand equal
fidelity to her where she conceals it. To paint mist rightly, space
rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing
else rightly, but the rule is simple for all that; if the artist is
painting something that he knows and loves, as he knows it because he
loves it, whether it be the fair strawberry of Cima, or the clear sky of
Francia, or the blazing incomprehensible mist of Turner, he is all
right; but the moment he does anything as he thinks it ought to be,
because he does not care about it, he is all wrong. He has only to ask
himself whether he cares for anything except himself; so far as he does
he will make a good picture; so far as he thinks of himself a vile one.
This is the root of the viciousness of the whole French school. Industry
they have, learning they have, power they have, feeling they have, yet
not so much feeling as ever to force them to forget themselves even for
a moment; the ruling motive is invariably vanity, and the picture
therefore an abortion.
§ 11. The open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. Mountain
drawing of Masaccio. Landscape of the Bellinis and Giorgione.
Returning
to the pictures of the religious schools, we find that their open skies
are also of the highest value. Their preciousness is such that no
subsequent schools can by comparison be said to have painted sky at all,
but only clouds, or mist, or blue canopies. The golden sky of Marco
Basaiti in the Academy of Venice altogether overpowers and renders
valueless that of Titian beside it. Those of Francia in the
gallery of Bologna are even more wonderful, because cooler in tone and
behind figures in full light. The touches of white light in the horizon
of Angelico's Last Judgment are felt and wrought with equal truth. The
dignified and simple forms of cloud in repose are often by these
painters sublimely expressed, but of changeful cloud form they show no
examples. The architecture, mountains, and water of these distances are
commonly conventional; motives are to be found in them of the highest
beauty, and especially remarkable for quantity and meaning of incident;
but they can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling that
produced them. It may generally be observed that whatever has been the
result of strong emotion is ill seen unless through the medium of such
emotion, and will lead to conclusions utterly false and perilous, if it
be made a subject of cold-hearted observance, or an object of systematic
imitation. One piece of genuine mountain drawing, however, occurs in the
landscape of Masaccio's Tribute Money. It is impossible to say what
strange results might have taken place in this particular field of art,
or how suddenly a great school of landscape might have arisen, had the
life of this great painter been prolonged. Of this particular fresco I
shall have much to say hereafter. The two brothers Bellini gave a marked
and vigorous impulse to the landscape of Venice, of Gentile's
architecture I shall speak presently. Giovanni's, though in style less
interesting and in place less prominent, occurring chiefly as a kind of
frame to his pictures, connecting them with the architecture of the
churches for which they were intended, is in refinement of realization,
I suppose, quite unrivalled, especially in passages requiring pure
gradation, as the hollows of vaultings. That of Veronese would look
ghostly beside it; that of Titian lightless. His landscape is
occasionally quaint and strange like Giorgione's, and as fine in color,
as that behind the Madonna in the Brera gallery at Milan; but a more
truthful fragment occurs in the picture in San Francesco della Vigna at
Venice; and in the picture of St. Jerome in the church of San
Grisostomo, the landscape is as perfect and beautiful as any background
may legitimately be, and finer, as far as it goes, than anything of
Titian's. It is remarkable for the absolute truth of its sky,
whose blue, clear as crystal, and though deep in tone bright as the open
air, is gradated to the horizon with a cautiousness and finish almost
inconceivable; and to obtain light at the horizon without contradicting
the system of chiaroscuro adopted in the figures which are lighted from
the right hand, it is barred across with some glowing white cirri which,
in their turn, are opposed by a single dark horizontal line of lower
cloud; and to throw the whole farther back, there is a wreath of rain
cloud of warmer color floating above the mountains, lighted on its under
edge, whose faithfulness to nature, both in hue and in its light and
shattering form, is altogether exemplary; the wandering of the light
among the hills is equally studied, and the whole is crowned by the
grand realization of the leaves of the fig-tree alluded to (Vol. II.
Part III. Chap. 5,) as well as of the herbage upon the rocks.
Considering that with all this care and completeness in the background,
there is nothing that is not of meaning and necessity in reference to
the figures, and that in the figures themselves the dignity and
heavenliness of the highest religious painters are combined with a force
and purity of color, greater I think than Titian's, it is a work which
may be set before the young artist as in every respect a nearly
faultless guide. Giorgione's landscape is inventive and solemn, but
owing to the rarity even of his nominal works I dare not speak of it in
general terms. It is certainly conventional, and is rather, I imagine,
to be studied for its color and its motives than its details.
§ 12. Landscape of Titian and Tintoret.
Of Titian and Tintoret I have
spoken already. The latter is every way the greater master, never
indulging in the exaggerated color of Titian, and attaining far more
perfect light; his grasp of nature is more extensive, and his view of
her more imaginative, (incidental notices of his landscape will be found
in the chapter on Imagination penetrative, of the second volume,) but he
is usually too impatient to carry his thoughts as far out, or to realize
with as much substantiality as Titian. In the St. Jerome of the latter
in the gallery of the Brera, there is a superb example of the modes in
which the objects of landscape may be either suggested or elaborated
according to their place and claim. The larger features of the ground,
foliage, and drapery, as well as the lion in the lower angle, are
executed with a slightness which admits not of close
examination, and which, if not in shade, would be offensive to the
generality of observers. But on the rock above the lion, where it turns
towards the light, and where the eye is intended to dwell, there is a
wreath of ivy of which every leaf is separately drawn with the greatest
accuracy and care, and beside it a lizard, studied with equal
earnestness, yet always with that right grandeur of manner to which I
have alluded in the preface. Tintoret seldom reaches or attempts the
elaboration in substance and color of these objects, but he is even more
truth-telling and certain in his rendering of all the great characters
of specific form, and as the painter of Space he stands altogether alone
among dead masters; being the first who introduced the slightness and
confusion of touch which are expressive of the effects of luminous
objects seen through large spaces of air, and the principles of aerial
color which have been since carried out in other fields by Turner. I
conceive him to be the most powerful painter whom the world has seen,
and that he was prevented from being also the most perfect, partly by
untoward circumstances in his position and education, partly by the very
fulness and impetuosity of his own mind, partly by the want of religious
feeling and its accompanying perception of beauty; for his noble
treatment of religious subject, of which I have given several examples
in the third part, appears to be the result only of that grasp which a
great and well-toned intellect necessarily takes of any subject
submitted to it, and is wanting in the signs of the more withdrawn and
sacred sympathies.
But whatever advances were made by Tintoret in modes of artistical
treatment, he cannot be considered as having enlarged the sphere of
landscape conception. He took no cognizance even of the materials and
motives, so singularly rich in color, which were forever around him in
his own Venice. All portions of Venetian scenery introduced by him are
treated conventionally and carelessly; the architectural characters lost
altogether, the sea distinguished from the sky only by a darker green,
while of the sky itself only those forms were employed by him which had
been repeated again and again for centuries, though in less tangibility
and completion. Of mountain scenery he has left, I believe, no example
so far carried as that of John Bellini above instanced.
§ 13. Schools of Florence, Milan, and Bologna.
The Florentine and
Ambrian schools supply us with no examples of landscape, except that
introduced by their earliest masters, gradually overwhelmed under
renaissance architecture.
Leonardo's landscape has been of unfortunate effect on art, so far as it
has had effect at all. In realization of detail he verges on the
ornamental, in his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and little
of the feeling of the earlier men. Behind the "Sacrifice for the
Friends" of Giotto at Pisa, there is a sweet piece of rock incident, a
little fountain breaking out at the mountain foot, and trickling away,
its course marked by branches of reeds, the latter formal enough
certainly, and always in triplets, but still with a sense of nature
pervading the whole which is utterly wanting to the rocks of Leonardo in
the Holy Family in the Louvre. The latter are grotesque without being
ideal, and extraordinary without being impressive. The sketch in the
Uffizii of Florence has some fine foliage, and there is of course a
certain virtue in all the work of a man like Leonardo which I would not
depreciate, but our admiration of it in this particular field must be
qualified, and our following cautious.
No advances were made in landscape, so far as I know, after the time of
Tintoret; the power of art ebbed gradually away from the derivative
schools; various degrees of cleverness or feeling being manifested in
more or less brilliant conventionalism. I once supposed there was some
life in the landscape of Domenichino, but in this I must have been
wrong. The man who painted the Madonna del Rosario and Martyrdom of St.
Agnes in the gallery of Bologna, is palpably incapable of doing anything
good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind, whatsoever.[8]
§ 14. Claude, Salvator, and the Poussins.
Though, however, at this
period the general grasp of the schools was perpetually contracting, a
gift was given to the world by Claude, for which we are perhaps hardly
enough grateful, owing to the very frequency of our after enjoyment of
it. He set the sun in heaven, and was, I suppose, the first who
attempted anything like the realization of actual sunshine in misty air.
He gives the first example of the study of nature for her own sake, and
allowing for the unfortunate circumstances of his education, and for his
evident inferiority of intellect, more could hardly have been expected
from him. His false taste, forced composition, and ignorant rendering of
detail have perhaps been of more detriment to art than the gift he gave
was of advantage. The character of his own mind is singular; I know of
no other instance of a man's working from nature continually with the
desire of being true, and never attaining the power of drawing so much
as a bough of a tree rightly. Salvator, a man originally endowed with
far higher power of mind than Claude, was altogether unfaithful to his
mission, and has left us, I believe, no gift. Everything that he did is
evidently for the sake of exhibiting his own dexterity; there is no love
of any kind for anything; his choice of landscape features is dictated
by no delight in the sublime, but by mere animal restlessness or
ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which he could not
altogether deprive himself. He has done nothing which others have not
done better, or which it would not have been better not to have done; in
nature, he mistakes distortion for energy, and savageness for
sublimity; in man, mendicity for sanctity, and conspiracy for heroism.
The landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is usually
composed and elaborated on right principles, (compare preface to second
edition,) but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or
peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found
in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to
Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace
to Raffaelle's. The landscapes of Gaspar have serious feeling and often
valuable and solemn color; virtueless otherwise, they are full of the
most degraded mannerism, and I believe the admiration of them to have
been productive of extensive evil among recent schools.
§ 15. German and Flemish landscape.
The development of landscape north
of the Alps, presents us with the same general phases under
modifications dependent partly on less intensity of feeling, partly on
diminished availableness of landscape material. That of the religious
painters is treated with the same affectionate completion; but
exuberance of fancy sometimes diminishes the influence of the
imagination, and the absence of the Italian force of passion admits of
more patient and somewhat less intellectual elaboration. A morbid habit
of mind is evident in many, seeming to lose sight of the balance and
relations of things, so as to become intense in trifles, gloomily
minute, as in Albert Durer; and this mingled with a feverish operation
of the fancy, which appears to result from certain habitual conditions
of bodily health rather than of mental culture, (and of which the
sickness without the power is eminently characteristic of the modern
Germans;) but with all this there are virtues of the very highest order
in those schools, and I regret that my knowledge is insufficient to
admit of my giving any detailed account of them.
In the landscape of Rembrandt and Rubens, we have the northern parallel
to the power of the Venetians. Among the etchings and drawings of
Rembrandt, landscape thoughts may be found not unworthy of Titian, and
studies from nature of sublime fidelity; but his system of chiaroscuro
was inconsistent with the gladness, and his peculiar modes of feeling
with the grace, of nature; nor from my present knowledge can
I name any work on canvas in which he has carried out the dignity of his
etched conceptions, or exhibited any perceptiveness of new truths.
Not so Rubens, who perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of
complete unconventional unaffected landscape. His treatment is healthy,
manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to
minute and multitudinous detail; always as far as it goes pure,
forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in
color. In the Pitti palace, the best of its two Rubens landscapes has
been placed near a characteristic and highly-finished Titian, the
marriage of St. Catherine. But for the grandeur of line and solemn
feeling in the flock of sheep, and the figures of the latter work, I
doubt if all its glow and depth of tone could support its overcharged
green and blue against the open breezy sunshine of the Fleming. I do not
mean to rank the art of Rubens with that of Titian, but it is always to
be remembered that Titian hardly ever paints sunshine, but a certain
opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of imitative
truth in it,—
"The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality:"
and that art of this kind must always be liable to some appearance of
failure when compared with a less pathetic statement of facts.
It is to be noted, however, that the licenses taken by Rubens in
particular instances are as bold as his general statements are sincere.
In the landscape just instanced the horizon is an oblique line; in the
Sunset of our own gallery many of the shadows fall at right angles to
the light; and in a picture in the Dulwich gallery a rainbow is seen by
the spectator at the side of the sun.
These bold and frank licenses are not to be considered as detracting
from the rank of the painter; they are usually characteristic of those
minds whose grasp of nature is so certain and extensive as to enable
them fearlessly to sacrifice a truth of actuality to a truth of feeling.
Yet the young artist must keep in mind that the painter's
greatness consists not in his taking, but in his atoning for them.
§ 16. The lower Dutch schools.
Among the professed landscapists of the
Dutch school, we find much dexterous imitation of certain kinds of
nature, remarkable usually for its persevering rejection of whatever is
great, valuable, or affecting in the object studied. Where, however,
they show real desire to paint what they saw as far as they saw it,
there is of course much in them that is instructive, as in Cuyp and in
the etchings of Waterloo, which have even very sweet and genuine
feeling; and so in some of their architectural painters. But the object
of the great body of them is merely to display manual dexterities of one
kind or another, and their effect on the public mind is so totally for
evil, that though I do not deny the advantage an artist of real judgment
may derive from the study of some of them, I conceive the best patronage
that any monarch could possibly bestow upon the arts, would be to
collect the whole body of them into a grand gallery and burn it to the
ground.
§ 17. English school, Wilson and Gainsborough.
Passing to the English
school, we find a connecting link between them and the Italians formed
by Richard Wilson. Had this artist studied under favorable
circumstances, there is evidence of his having possessed power enough to
produce an original picture; but, corrupted by study of the Poussins,
and gathering his materials chiefly in their field, the district about
Rome—a district especially unfavorable, as exhibiting no pure or
healthy nature, but a diseased and overgrown Flora among half-developed
volcanic rocks, loose calcareous concretions, and mouldering wrecks of
buildings—and whose spirit, I conceive, to be especially opposed to the
natural tone of the English mind, his originality was altogether
overpowered, and, though he paints in a manly way and occasionally
reaches exquisite tones of color, as in the small and very precious
picture belonging to Mr. Rogers, and sometimes manifests some freshness
of feeling, as in the Villa of Mæcenas of our National Gallery, yet his
pictures are in general mere diluted adaptations from Poussin and
Salvator, without the dignity of the one or the fire of the other.
Not so Gainsborough, a great name his whether of the English
or any other school. The greatest colorist since Rubens, and the last, I
think, of legitimate colorists; that is to say, of those who were fully
acquainted with the power of their material; pure in his English
feeling, profound in his seriousness, graceful in his gayety, there are
nevertheless certain deductions to be made from his worthiness which yet
I dread to make, because my knowledge of his landscape works is not
extensive enough to justify me in speaking of them decisively; but this
is to be noted of all that I know, that they are rather motives of
feeling and color than earnest studies; that their execution is in some
degree mannered, and always hasty; that they are altogether wanting in
the affectionate detail of which I have already spoken; and that their
color is in some measure dependent on a bituminous brown and
conventional green which have more of science than of truth in them.
These faults may be sufficiently noted in the magnificent picture
presented by him to the Royal Academy, and tested by a comparison of it
with the Turner (Llanberis,) in the same room. Nothing can be more
attractively luminous or aerial than the distance of the Gainsborough,
nothing more bold or inventive than the forms of its crags and the
diffusion of the broad distant light upon them, where a vulgar artist
would have thrown them into dark contrast. But it will be found that the
light of the distance is brought out by a violent exaggeration of the
gloom in the valley; that the forms of the green trees which bear the
chief light are careless and ineffective; that the markings of the crags
are equally hasty; and that no object in the foreground has realization
enough to enable the eye to rest upon it. The Turner, a much feebler
picture in its first impression, and altogether inferior in the quality
and value of its individual hues, will yet be found to the end more
forcible, because unexaggerated; its gloom is moderate and aerial, its
light deep in tone, its color entirely unconventional, and the forms of
its rocks studied with the most devoted care. With Gainsborough
terminates the series of painters connected with the elder schools. By
whom, among those yet living or lately lost, the impulse was first given
to modern landscape, I attempt not to decide. Such questions are rather
invidious than interesting; the particular tone or direction of any
school seems to me always to have resulted rather from
certain phases of national character, limited to particular periods,
than from individual teaching; and, especially among moderns, what has
been good in each master has been commonly original.
§ 18. Constable, Calcott.
I have already alluded to the simplicity and
earnestness of the mind of Constable; to its vigorous rupture with
school laws, and to its unfortunate error on the opposite side.
Unteachableness seems to have been a main feature of his character, and
there is corresponding want of veneration in the way he approaches
nature herself. His early education and associations were also against
him; they induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low order.
I have never seen any work of his in which there were any signs of his
being able to draw, and hence even the most necessary details are
painted by him inefficiently. His works are also eminently wanting both
in rest and refinement, and Fuseli's jesting compliment is too true; for
the showery weather in which the artist delights, misses alike the
majesty of storm and the loveliness of calm weather: it is great-coat
weather, and nothing more. There is strange want of depth in the mind
which has no pleasure in sunbeams but when piercing painfully through
clouds, nor in foliage but when shaken by the wind, nor in light itself
but when flickering, glistening, restless, and feeble. Yet, with all
these deductions, his works are to be deeply respected as thoroughly
original, thoroughly honest, free from affectation, manly in manner,
frequently successful in cool color, and especially realizing certain
motives of English scenery with perhaps as much affection as such
scenery, unless when regarded through media of feeling derived from
higher sources, is calculated to inspire.
On the works of Calcott, high as his reputation stands, I should look
with far less respect; I see not any preference or affection in the
artist; there is no tendency in him with which we can sympathize, nor
does there appear any sign of aspiration, effort, or enjoyment in any
one of his works. He appears to have completed them methodically, to
have been content with them when completed, to have thought them good,
legitimate, regular pictures; perhaps in some respects better than
nature. He painted everything tolerably, and nothing excellently; he
has given us no gift, struck for us no light, and though he
has produced one or two valuable works, of which the finest I know is
the Marine in the possession of Sir J. Swinburne, they will, I believe,
in future have no place among those considered representative of the
English school.
§ 19. Peculiar tendency of recent landscape.
Throughout the range of
elder art it will be remembered we have found no instance of the
faithful painting of mountain scenery, except in a faded background of
Masaccio's: nothing more than rocky eminences, undulating hills, or
fantastic crags, and even these treated altogether under typical forms.
The more specific study of mountains seems to have coincided with the
most dexterous practice of water-color; but it admits of doubt whether
the choice of subject has been directed by the vehicle, or whether, as I
rather think, the tendency of national feeling has been followed in the
use of the most appropriate means. Something is to be attributed to the
increased demand for slighter works of art, and much to the sense of the
quality of objects now called picturesque, which appears to be
exclusively of modern origin. From what feeling the character of
middle-age architecture and costume arose, or with what kind of
affection their forms were regarded by the inventors, I am utterly
unable to guess; but of this I think we may be assured, that the natural
instinct and child-like wisdom of those days were altogether different
from the modern feeling, which appears to have taken its origin in the
absence of such objects, and to be based rather on the strangeness of
their occurrence than on any real affection for them; and which is
certainly so shallow and ineffective as to be instantly and always
sacrificed by the majority to fashion, comfort, or economy. Yet I trust
that there is a healthy though feeble love of nature mingled with it,
nature pure, separate, felicitous, which is also peculiar to the
moderns; and as signs of this feeling, or ministers to it, I look with
veneration upon many works which, in a technical point of view, are of
minor importance.
§ 20. G. Robson, D. Cox. False use of the term "style."
I have been
myself indebted for much teaching and more delight to those of the late
G. Robson. Weaknesses there are in them manifold, much bad drawing, much
forced color, much over finish, little of what artists call
composition; but there is thorough affection for the thing drawn; they
are serious and quiet in the highest degree, certain qualities of
atmosphere and texture in them have never been excelled, and certain
facts of mountain scenery never but by them expressed, as, for instance,
the stillness and depth of the mountain tarns, with the reversed imagery
of their darkness signed across by the soft lines of faintly touching
winds; the solemn flush of the brown fern and glowing heath under
evening light; the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against
clear still twilight. With equal gratitude I look to the drawings of
David Cox, which, in spite of their loose and seemingly careless
execution, are not less serious in their meaning, nor less important in
their truth. I must, however, in reviewing those modern works in which
certain modes of execution are particularly manifested, insist
especially on this general principle, applicable to all times of art;
that what is usually called the style or manner of an artist is, in all
good art, nothing but the best means of getting at the particular truth
which the artist wanted; it is not a mode peculiar to himself of getting
at the same truths as other men, but the only mode of getting the
particular facts he desires, and which mode, if others had desired to
express those facts, they also must have adopted. All habits of
execution persisted in under no such necessity, but because the artist
has invented them, or desires to show his dexterity in them, are utterly
base; for every good painter finds so much difficulty in reaching the
end he sees and desires, that he has no time nor power left for playing
tricks on the road to it; he catches at the easiest and best means he
can get; it is possible that such means may be singular, and then it
will be said that his style is strange; but it is not a style at all,
it is the saying of a particular thing in the only way in which it
possibly can be said. Thus the reed pen outline and peculiar touch of
Prout, which are frequently considered as mere manner, are in fact the
only means of expressing the crumbling character of stone which the
artist loves and desires. That character never has been expressed except
by him, nor will it ever be expressed except by his means. And it is of
the greatest importance to distinguish this kind of necessary and
virtuous manner from the conventional manners very frequent in
derivative schools, and always utterly to be contemned,
wherein an artist, desiring nothing and feeling nothing, executes
everything in his own particular mode, and teaches emulous scholars how
to do with difficulty what might have been done with ease. It is true
that there are sometimes instances in which great masters have employed
different means of getting at the same end, but in these cases their
choice has been always of those which to them appeared the shortest and
most complete; their practice has never been prescribed by affectation
or continued from habit, except so far as must be expected from such
weakness as is common to all men; from hands that necessarily do most
readily what they are most accustomed to do, and minds always liable to
prescribe to the hands that which they can do most readily.
The recollection of this will keep us from being offended with the loose
and blotted handling of David Cox. There is no other means by which his
object could be attained. The looseness, coolness, and moisture of his
herbage; the rustling crumpled freshness of his broad-leaved weeds; the
play of pleasant light across his deep heathered moor or plashing sand;
the melting of fragments of white mist into the dropping blue above; all
this has not been fully recorded except by him, and what there is of
accidental in his mode of reaching it, answers gracefully to the
accidental part of nature herself. Yet he is capable of more than this,
and if he suffers himself uniformly to paint beneath his capability,
that which began in feeling must necessarily end in manner. He paints
too many small pictures, and perhaps has of late permitted his peculiar
execution to be more manifest than is necessary. Of this, he is himself
the best judge. For almost all faults of this kind the public are
answerable, not the painter. I have alluded to one of his grander
works—such as I should wish always to see him paint—in the preface;
another, I think still finer, a red sunset on distant hills, almost
unequalled for truth and power of color, was painted by him several
years ago, and remains, I believe, in his own possession.
§ 21. Copley Fielding. Phenomena of distant color.
The deserved
popularity of Copley Fielding has rendered it less necessary for me to
allude frequently to his works in the following pages than it would
otherwise have been, more especially as my own sympathies and enjoyments
are so entirely directed in the channel which his art has
taken, that I am afraid of trusting them too far. Yet I may, perhaps, be
permitted to speak of myself so far as I suppose my own feelings to be
representative of those of a class; and I suppose that there are many
who, like myself, at some period of their life have derived more intense
and healthy pleasure from the works of this painter than of any other
whatsoever; healthy, because always based on his faithful and simple
rendering of nature, and that of very lovely and impressive nature,
altogether freed from coarseness, violence, or vulgarity. Various
references to that which he has attained will be found subsequently:
what I am now about to say respecting what he has not attained, is not
in depreciation of what he has accomplished, but in regret at his
suffering powers of a high order to remain in any measure dormant.
He indulges himself too much in the use of crude color. Pure cobalt,
violent rose, and purple, are of frequent occurrence in his distances;
pure siennas and other browns in his foregrounds, and that not as
expressive of lighted but of local color. The reader will find in the
following chapters that I am no advocate for subdued coloring; but crude
color is not bright color, and there was never a noble or brilliant work
of color yet produced, whose real form did not depend on the subduing of
its tints rather than the elevation of them.
It is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn in art, that
the warm colors of distance, even the most glowing, are subdued by the
air so as in no wise to resemble the same color seen on a foreground
object; so that the rose of sunset on clouds or mountains has a gray in
it which distinguishes it from the rose color of the leaf of a flower;
and the mingling of this gray of distance, without in the slightest
degree taking away the expression of the intense and perfect purity of
the color in and by itself, is perhaps the last attainment of the great
landscape colorist. In the same way the blue of distance, however
intense, is not the blue of a bright blue flower, and it is not
distinguished from it by different texture merely, but by a certain
intermixture and under current of warm color, which is altogether
wanting in many of the blues of Fielding's distances; and so of every
bright distant color; while in foreground where colors may be, and ought
to be, pure, yet that any of them are expressive of light is
only to be felt where there is the accurate fitting of them to their
relative shadows which we find in the works of Giorgione, Titian,
Tintoret, Veronese, Turner, and all other great colorists in proportion
as they are so. Of this fitting of light to shadow Fielding is
altogether regardless, so that his foregrounds are constantly assuming
the aspect of overcharged local color instead of sunshine, and his
figures and cattle look transparent.
§ 22. Beauty of mountain foreground.
Again, the finishing of Fielding's
foregrounds, as regards their drawing, is minute without accuracy,
multitudinous without thought, and confused without mystery. Where
execution is seen to be in measure accidental, as in Cox, it may be
received as representative of what is accidental in nature; but there is
no part of Fielding's foreground that is accidental; it is evidently
worked and reworked, dotted, rubbed, and finished with great labor, and
where the virtue, playfulness, and freedom of accident are thus removed,
one of two virtues must be substituted for them. Either we must have the
deeply studied and imaginative foreground, of which every part is
necessary to every other, and whose every spark of light is essential to
the well-being of the whole, of which the foregrounds of Turner in the
Liber Studiorum are the most eminent examples I know, or else we must
have in some measure the botanical faithfulness and realization of the
early masters. Neither of these virtues is to be found in Fielding's.
Its features, though grouped with feeling, are yet scattered and
inessential. Any one of them might be altered in many ways without doing
harm; there is no proportioned, necessary, unalterable relation among
them; no evidence of invention or of careful thought, while on the other
hand there is no botanical or geological accuracy, nor any point on
which the eye may rest with thorough contentment in its realization.
It seems strange that to an artist of so quick feeling the details of a
mountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive, and entice
him to greater accuracy of study. There is not a fragment of its living
rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable
manifestations of God's working thereupon. The harmonies of color among
the native lichens are better than Titian's; the interwoven
bells of campanula and heather are better than all the arabesques of the
Vatican; they need no improvement, arrangement, nor alteration, nothing
but love, and every combination of them is different from every other,
so that a painter need never repeat himself if he will only be true; yet
all these sources of power have been of late entirely neglected by
Fielding; there is evidence through all his foregrounds of their being
mere home inventions, and like all home inventions they exhibit
perpetual resemblances and repetitions; the painter is evidently
embarrassed without his rutted road in the middle, and his boggy pool at
the side, which pool he has of late painted in hard lines of violent
blue: there is not a stone, even of the nearest and most important,
which has its real lichens upon it, or a studied form or anything more
to occupy the mind than certain variations of dark and light browns. The
same faults must be found with his present painting of foliage, neither
the stems nor leafage being ever studied from nature; and this is the
more to be regretted, because in the earlier works of the artist there
was much admirable drawing, and even yet his power is occasionally
developed in his larger works, as in a Bolton Abbey on canvas, which
was,—I cannot say, exhibited,—but was in the rooms of the Royal
Academy in 1843.[9] I should have made the preceding remarks
with more hesitation and diffidence, but that, from a comparison of
works of this kind with the slighter ornaments of the water-color rooms,
it seems evident that the painter is not unaware of the deficiencies of
these latter, and concedes something of what he would himself desire to
what he has found to be the feeling of a majority of his admirers. This
is a dangerous modesty, and especially so in these days when the
judgment of the many is palpably as artificial as their feeling is cold.
§ 23. De Wint.
There is much that is instructive and deserving of high
praise in the sketches of De Wint. Yet it is to be remembered that even
the pursuit of truth, however determined, will have results limited and
imperfect when its chief motive is the pride of being true; and I fear
that these works, sublime as many of them have unquestionably been,
testify more accuracy of eye and experience of color than exercise of
thought. Their truth of effect is often purchased at too great an
expense by the loss of all beauty of form, and of the higher refinements
of color; deficiencies, however, on which I shall not insist, since the
value of the sketches, as far as they go, is great; they have done good
service and set good example, and whatever their failings may be, there
is evidence in them that the painter has always done what he believed to
be right.
§ 24. Influence of Engraving. J. D. Harding.
The influence of the
masters of whom we have hitherto spoken is confined to those who have
access to their actual works, since the particular qualities in which
they excel, are in no wise to be rendered by the engraver. Those of whom
we have next to speak are known to the public in a great measure by the
help of the engraver; and while their influence is thus very far
extended, their modes of working are perhaps, in some degree modified by
the habitual reference to the future translation into light and shade;
reference which is indeed beneficial in the care it induces
respecting the arrangement of the chiaroscuro and the explanation of the
forms, but which is harmful, so far as it involves a dependence rather
on quantity of picturesque material than on substantial color or simple
treatment, and as it admits of indolent diminution of size and
slightness of execution.
We should not be just to the present works of J. D. Harding unless we
took this influence into account. Some years back none of our artists
realized more laboriously, nor obtained more substantial color and
texture; a large drawing in the possession of B. G. Windus, Esq., of
Tottenham, is of great value as an example of his manner at the period;
a manner not only careful, but earnest, and free from any kind of
affectation. Partly from the habit of making slight and small drawings
for engravers, and partly also, I imagine, from an overstrained seeking
after appearances of dexterity in execution, his drawings have of late
years become both less solid and less complete; not, however, without
attaining certain brilliant qualities in exchange which are very
valuable in the treatment of some of the looser portions of subject. Of
the extended knowledge and various powers of this painter, frequent
instances are noted in the following pages. Neither, perhaps, are
rightly estimated among artists, owing to a certain coldness of
sentiment in his choice of subject, and a continual preference of the
picturesque to the impressive; proved perhaps in nothing so distinctly
as in the little interest usually attached to his skies, which, if
aerial and expressive of space and movement, content him, though
destitute of story, power, or character: an exception must be made in
favor of the very grand sunrise on the Swiss Alps, exhibited in 1844,
wherein the artist's real power was in some measure displayed, though I
am convinced he is still capable of doing far greater things. So in his
foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to their
wildness, and lose the forest in the copse, neither is he at all
accurate enough in his expression of species or realization of near
portions. These are deficiencies, be it observed, of sentiment, not of
perception, as there are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of
material truth.
Very extensive influence in modern art must be attributed to the works
of Samuel Prout; and as there are some circumstances
belonging to his treatment of architectural subject § 25. Samuel Prout.
Early painting of architecture, how deficient.which it does not come
within the sphere of the following chapters to examine, I shall endeavor
to note the more important of them here.
Let us glance back for a moment to the architectural drawing of earlier
times. Before the time of the Bellinis at Venice, and of Ghirlandajo at
Florence, I believe there are no examples of anything beyond
conventional representation of architecture, often rich, quaint, and
full of interest, as Memmi's abstract of the Duomo at Florence at S^ta.
Maria Novella; but not to be classed with any genuine efforts at
representation. It is much to be regretted that the power and custom of
introducing well-drawn architecture should have taken place only when
architectural taste had been itself corrupted, and that the architecture
introduced by Bellini, Ghirlandajo, Francia, and the other patient and
powerful workmen of the fifteenth century, is exclusively of the
renaissance styles; while their drawing of it furnishes little that is
of much interest to the architectural draughtsman as such, being always
governed by a reference to its subordinate position, so that all
forceful shadow and play of color are (most justly) surrendered for
quiet and uniform hues of gray and chiaroscuro of extreme simplicity.
Whatever they chose to do they did with consummate grandeur, (note
especially the chiaroscuro of the square window of Ghirlandajo's which
so much delighted Vasari in S^ta. Maria Novella; and the daring
management of a piece of the perspective in the Salutation, opposite
where he has painted a flight of stairs descending in front, though the
picture is twelve feet above the eye); and yet this grandeur, in all
these men, results rather from the general power obtained in their
drawing of the figure than from any definite knowledge respecting the
things introduced in these accessory parts; so that while in some points
it is impossible for any painter to equal these accessories, unless he
were in all respects as great as Ghirlandajo or Bellini, in others it is
possible for him, with far inferior powers, to attain a representation
both more accurate and more interesting.
In order to arrive at the knowledge of these, we must briefly take note
of a few of the modes in which architecture itself is
agreeable to the mind, especially of the influence upon the character of
the building which is to be attributed to the signs of age.
§ 26. Effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable.
It is evident,
first, that if the design of the building be originally bad, the only
virtue it can ever possess will be in signs of antiquity. All that in
this world enlarges the sphere of affection or imagination is to be
reverenced, and all those circumstances enlarge it which strengthen our
memory or quicken our conception of the dead; hence it is no light sin
to destroy anything that is old, more especially because, even with the
aid of all obtainable records of the past, we, the living, occupy a
space of too large importance and interest in our own eyes; we look upon
the world too much as our own, too much as if we had possessed it and
should possess it forever, and forget that it is a mere hostelry, of
which we occupy the apartments for a time, which others better than we
have sojourned in before, who are now where we should desire to be with
them. Fortunately for mankind, as some counterbalance to that wretched
love of novelty which originates in selfishness, shallowness, and
conceit, and which especially characterizes all vulgar minds, there is
set in the deeper places of the heart such affection for the signs of
age that the eye is delighted even by injuries which are the work of
time; not but that there is also real and absolute beauty in the forms
and colors so obtained, for which the original lines of the
architecture, unless they have been very grand indeed, are well
exchanged, so that there is hardly any building so ugly but that it may
be made an agreeable object by such appearances. It would not be easy,
for instance, to find a less pleasing piece of architecture than the
portion of the front of Queen's College, Oxford, which has just been
restored; yet I believe that few persons could have looked with total
indifference on the mouldering and peeled surface of the oolite
limestone previous to its restoration. If, however, the character of the
building consist in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil or
good effect of age upon it must depend in great measure on the kind of
art, the material, and the climate. The Parthenon, for instance, would
be injured by any markings which interfered with the contours of its
sculptures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colors of original
harmony and perfection are liable to injury, and are ill
exchanged for mouldering edges or brown weatherstains.
But as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be durable, and to
derive part of its glory from its antiquity, all art that is liable to
mortal injury from effects of time is therein out of place, and this is
another reason for the principle I have asserted in the second part,
page 204. I do not at this instant recollect a single instance of any
very fine building which is not improved up to a certain period by all
its signs of age, after which period, like all other human works, it
necessarily declines, its decline being in almost all ages and countries
accelerated by neglect and abuse in its time of beauty, and alteration
or restoration in its time of age.
Thus I conceive that all buildings dependent on color, whether of mosaic
or painting, have their effect improved by the richness of the
subsequent tones of age; for there are few arrangements of color so
perfect but that they are capable of improvement by some softening and
blending of this kind: with mosaic, the improvement may be considered as
proceeding almost so long as the design can be distinctly seen; with
painting, so long as the colors do not change or chip off.
Again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the effect of time is
such, that if the design be poor, it will enrich it; if overcharged,
simplify it; if harsh and violent, soften it; if smooth and obscure,
exhibit it; whatever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, whatever
virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow light; and this
to such an extent, that the artist is always liable to be tempted to the
drawing of details in old buildings as of extreme beauty, which look
cold and hard in their architectural lines; and I have never yet seen
any restoration or cleaned portion of a building whose effect was not
inferior to the weathered parts, even to those of which the design had
in some parts almost disappeared. On the front of the church of San
Michele at Lucca, the mosaics have fallen out of half the columns, and
lie in weedy ruin beneath; in many, the frost has torn large masses of
the entire coating away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. Two of the
shafts of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea wind,
the rest have lost their proportions, the edges of the arches are hacked
into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the
weed-grown wall. The process has gone too far, and yet I doubt not but
that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when first
built, always with exception of one circumstance, that the French
shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it an
escutcheon with "Libertas" upon it, which abomination of desolation, the
Lucchese have not yet had human-heartedness enough to pull down.
Putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory out of
the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition of the most
impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evidently the duty of
the draughtsman to represent it under those conditions, and with that
amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the
sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is
true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far
greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there
are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by
advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of
ruinousness to interfere with his perception of the art of the
building, and substitutes rude fractures and blotting stains for all its
fine chiselling and determined color, he has lost the end of his own
art.
§ 27. Effects of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail.
So
far of aging; next of effects of light and color. It is, I believe,
hardly enough observed among architects that the same decorations are of
totally different effect according to their position and the time of
day. A moulding which is of value on a building facing south, where it
takes deep shadows from steep sun, may be utterly ineffective if placed
west or east; and a moulding which is chaste and intelligible in shade
on a north side, may be grotesque, vulgar, or confused when it takes
black shadows on the south. Farther, there is a time of day in which
every architectural decoration is seen to best advantage, and certain
times in which its peculiar force and character are best explained; of
these niceties the architect takes little cognizance, as he must in some
sort calculate on the effect of ornament at all times; but to the artist
they are of infinite importance, and especially for this reason, that
there is always much detail on buildings which cannot be
drawn as such, which is too far off, or too minute, and which must
consequently be set down in short-hand of some kind or another; and, as
it were, an abstract, more or less philosophical, made of its general
heads. Of the style of this abstract, of the lightness, confusion, and
mystery necessary in it, I have spoken elsewhere; at present I insist
only on the arrangement and matter of it. All good ornament and all good
architecture are capable of being put into short-hand; that is, each has
a perfect system of parts, principal and subordinate, of which, even
when the complemental details vanish in distance, the system and anatomy
yet remain visible so long as anything is visible; so that the divisions
of a beautiful spire shall be known as beautiful even till their last
line vanishes in blue mist, and the effect of a well-designed moulding
shall be visibly disciplined, harmonious, and inventive, as long as it
is seen to be a moulding at all. Now the power of the artist of marking
this character depends not on his complete knowledge of the design, but
on his experimental knowledge of its salient and bearing parts, and of
the effects of light and shadow, by which their saliency is best told.
He must therefore be prepared, according to his subject, to use light,
steep or level, intense or feeble, and out of the resulting chiaroscuro
select those peculiar and hinging points on which the rest are based,
and by which all else that is essential may be explained.
The thoughtful command of all these circumstances constitutes the real
architectural draughtsman; the habits of executing everything either
under one kind of effect or in one manner, or of using unintelligible
and meaningless abstracts of beautiful designs, are those which must
commonly take the place of it and are the most extensively esteemed.[10]
§ 28. Architectural painting of Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio;
Let us now proceed with our review of those artists who have devoted
themselves more peculiarly to architectural subject.
Foremost among them stand Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio, to whom
we are indebted for the only existing faithful statements of the
architecture of Old Venice, and who are the only authorities
to whom we can trust in conjecturing the former beauty of those few
desecrated fragments, the last of which are now being rapidly swept away
by the idiocy of modern Venetians.
Nothing can be more careful, nothing more delicately finished, or more
dignified in feeling than the works of both these men; and as
architectural evidence they are the best we could have had, all the
gilded parts being gilt in the picture, so that there can be no mistake
or confusion of them with yellow color or light, and all the frescoes or
mosaics given with the most absolute precision and fidelity. At the same
time they are by no means examples of perfect architectural drawing;
there is little light and shade in them of any kind, and none whatever
of the thoughtful observance of temporary effect of which we have just
been speaking; so that, in rendering the character of the relieved
parts, their solidity, depth, or gloom, the representation fails
altogether, and it is moreover lifeless from its very completion, both
the signs of age and the effects of use and habitation being utterly
rejected; rightly so, indeed, in these instances, (all the architecture
of these painters being in background to religious subject,) but wrongly
so, if we look to the architecture alone. Neither is there anything like
aerial perspective attempted; the employment of actual gold in the
decoration of all the distances, and the entire realization of their
details, as far as is possible on the scale compelled by perspective,
being alone sufficient to prevent this, except in the hands of painters
far more practised in effect than either Gentile or Carpaccio. But with
all these discrepancies, Gentile Bellini's church of St. Mark's is the
best church of St. Mark's that has ever been painted, so far as I know;
and I believe the reconciliation of true aerial perspective and
chiaroscuro with the splendor and dignity obtained by the real gilding
and elaborate detail, is a problem yet to be accomplished. With the help
of the Daguerreotype, and the lessons of color given by the later
Venetians, we ought now to be able to accomplish it, more especially as
the right use of gold has been shown us by the greatest master of effect
whom Venice herself produced, Tintoret, who has employed it with
infinite grace on the steps ascended by the young Madonna, in his large
picture in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto. Perugino
uses it also with singular grace, often employing it for golden light on
distant trees, and continually on the high light of hair, and that
without losing relative distances.
§ 29. And of the Venetians generally.
The great group of Venetian
painters who brought landscape art, for that time, to its culminating
point, have left, as we have already seen, little that is instructive in
architectural painting. The causes of this I cannot comprehend, for
neither Titian nor Tintoret appears to despise anything that affords
them either variety of form or of color, the latter especially
condescending to very trivial details,—as in the magnificent carpet
painting of the Doge Mocenigo; so that it might have been expected that
in the rich colors of St. Mark's, and the magnificent and fantastic
masses of the Byzantine palaces, they would have found where-upon to
dwell with delighted elaboration. This is, however, never the case, and
although frequently compelled to introduce portions of Venetian locality
in their backgrounds, such portions are always treated in a most hasty
and faithless manner, missing frequently all character of the building,
and never advanced to realization. In Titian's picture of Faith, the
view of Venice below is laid in so rapidly and slightly, the houses all
leaning this way and that, and of no color, the sea a dead gray green,
and the ship-sails mere dashes of the brush, that the most obscure of
Turner's Venices would look substantial beside it; while in the very
picture of Tintoret in which he has dwelt so elaborately on the carpet,
he has substituted a piece of ordinary renaissance composition for St.
Mark's, and in the background has chosen the Sansovino side of the
Piazzetta, treating even that so carelessly as to lose all the
proportion and beauty of its design, and so flimsily that the line of
the distant sea which has been first laid in, is seen through all the
columns. Evidences of magnificent power of course exist in whatever he
touches, but his full power is never turned in this direction. More
space is allowed to his architecture by Paul Veronese, but it is still
entirely suggestive, and would be utterly false except as a frame or
background for figures. The same may be said with respect to Raffaelle
and the Roman school.
If, however, these men laid architecture little under contribution
to their own art, they made their own art a glorious § 30.
Fresco painting of the Venetian exteriors. Canaletto.gift to
architecture, and the walls of Venice, which before, I believe, had
received color only in arabesque patterns, were lighted with human life
by Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese. Of the works of Tintoret
and Titian, nothing now, I believe, remains; two figures of Giorgione's
are still traceable on the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, one of which,
singularly uninjured, is seen from far above and below the Rialto,
flaming like the reflection of a sunset. Two figures of Veronese were
also traceable till lately, the head and arms of one still remain, and
some glorious olive-branches which were beside the other; the figure
having been entirely effaced by an inscription in large black letters on
a whitewash tablet which we owe to the somewhat inopportunely expressed
enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the district in favor of their new
pastor.[11] Judging, however, from the rate at which destruction is at
present advancing, and seeing that, in about seven or eight years more,
Venice will have utterly lost every external claim to interest, except
that which attaches to the group of buildings immediately around St.
Mark's place, and to the larger churches, it may be conjectured that the
greater part of her present degradation has taken place, at any rate,
within the last forty years. Let the reader with such scraps of evidence
as may still be gleaned from under the stucco and paint of the Italian
committees of taste, and from among the drawing-room innovations of
English and German residents restore Venice in his
imagination to some resemblance of what she must have been before her
fall. Let him, looking from Lido or Fusina, replace in the forest of
towers those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the French
threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and scarlet, overlay her
minarets with gold,[12] cleanse from their pollution those choked canals
which are now the drains of hovels, where they were once vestibules of
palaces, and fill them with gilded barges and bannered ships; finally,
let him withdraw from this scene, already so brilliant, such sadness and
stain as had been set upon it by the declining energies of more than
half a century, and he will see Venice as it was seen by Canaletto;
whose miserable, virtueless, heartless mechanism, accepted as the
representation of such various glory, is, both in its existence and
acceptance, among the most striking signs of the lost sensation and
deadened intellect of the nation at that time; a numbness and darkness
more without hope than that of the grave itself, holding and wearing yet
the sceptre and the crown like the corpses of the Etruscan kings, ready
to sink into ashes at the first unbarring of the door of the sepulchre.
 |
CASA CONTARINI FASAN, VENICE.
From a drawing by Ruskin. |
The mannerism of Canaletto is the most degraded that I know in the whole
range of art. Professing the most servile and mindless imitation, it
imitates nothing but the blackness of the shadows; it gives no one
single architectural ornament, however near, so much form as might
enable us even to guess at its actual one; and this I say not rashly,
for I shall prove it by placing portions of detail accurately copied
from Canaletto side by side with engravings from the Daguerreotype; it
gives the buildings neither their architectural beauty nor their
ancestral dignity, for there is no texture of stone nor character of age
in Canaletto's touch; which is invariably a violent, black, sharp, ruled
penmanlike line, as far removed from the grace of nature as from her
faintness and transparency; and for his truth of color, let
the single fact of his having omitted all record, whatsoever, of the
frescoes whose wrecks are still to be found at least on one half of the
unrestored palaces, and, with still less excusableness, all record of
the magnificent colored marbles of many whose greens and purples are
still undimmed upon the Casa Dario, Casa Bianca Capello, and multitudes
besides, speak for him in this respect.
Let it be observed that I find no fault with Canaletto, for his want of
poetry, of feeling, of artistical thoughtfulness in treatment, or of the
various other virtues which he does not so much as profess. He professes
nothing but colored Daguerreotypeism. Let us have it: most precious and
to be revered it would be: let us have fresco where fresco was, and that
copied faithfully; let us have carving where carving is, and that
architecturally true. I have seen Daguerreotypes in which every figure
and rosette, and crack and stain, and fissure are given on a scale of an
inch to Canaletto's three feet. What excuse is there to be offered for
his omitting, on that scale, as I shall hereafter show, all statement of
such ornament whatever? Among the Flemish schools, exquisite imitations
of architecture are found constantly, and that not with Canaletto's
vulgar, black exaggeration of shadow, but in the most pure and silvery
and luminous grays. I have little pleasure in such pictures; but I blame
not those who have more; they are what they profess to be, and they are
wonderful and instructive, and often graceful, and even affecting, but
Canaletto possesses no virtue except that of dexterous imitation of
commonplace light and shade, and perhaps, with the exception of
Salvator, no artist has ever fettered his unfortunate admirers more
securely from all healthy or vigorous perception of truth, or been of
more general detriment to all subsequent schools.
§ 31. Expression of the effects of age on architecture by S. Prout.
Neither, however, by the Flemings, nor by any other of the elder
schools, was the effect of age or of human life upon architecture ever
adequately expressed. What ruins they drew looked as if broken down on
purpose, what weeds they put on seemed put on for ornament. Their
domestic buildings had never any domesticity, the people looked out of
their windows evidently to be drawn, or came into the street only to
stand there forever. A peculiar studiousness infected all
accident; bricks fell out methodically, windows opened and shut by rule;
stones were chipped at regular intervals; everything that happened
seemed to have been expected before; and above all, the street had been
washed and the houses dusted expressly to be painted in their best. We
owe to Prout, I believe, the first perception, and certainly the only
existing expression of precisely the characters which were wanting to
old art, of that feeling which results from the influence among the
noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the
lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient
walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history. I suppose, from
the deserved popularity of the artist, that the strange pleasure which I
find myself in the deciphering of these is common to many; the feeling
has been rashly and thoughtlessly contemned as mere love of the
picturesque; there is, as I have above shown, a deeper moral in it, and
we owe much, I am not prepared to say how much, to the artist by whom
pre-eminently it has been excited. For, numerous as have been his
imitators, extended as his influence, and simple as his means and
manner, there has yet appeared nothing at all to equal him; there is
no stone drawing, no vitality of architecture like Prout's. I say
not this rashly, I have Mackenzie in my eye and many other capital
imitators; and I have carefully reviewed the Architectural work of the
Academicians, often most accurate and elaborate. I repeat, there is
nothing but the work of Prout which is true, living, or right in its
general impression, and nothing, therefore, so inexhaustibly agreeable.
Faults he has, manifold, easily detected, and much declaimed against by
second-rate artists; but his excellence no one has ever touched, and his
lithographic work, (Sketches in Flanders and Germany,) which was, I
believe, the first of the kind, still remains the most valuable of all,
numerous and elaborate as its various successors have been. The second
series (in Italy and Switzerland) was of less value, the drawings seemed
more laborious, and had less of the life of the original sketches, being
also for the most part of subjects less adapted for the development of
the artist's peculiar powers; but both are fine, and the Brussels,
Louvain, Cologne, and Nuremberg, subjects of the one, together with the
Tours, Amboise, Geneva, and Sion of the other, exhibit
substantial qualities of stone and wood drawing, together with an ideal
appreciation of the present active vital being of the cities, such as
nothing else has ever approached. Their value is much increased by the
circumstance of their being drawn by the artist's own hand upon the
stone, and by the consequent manly recklessness of subordinate parts,
(in works of this kind, be it remembered, much is subordinate,) which
is of all characters of execution the most refreshing. Note the scrawled
middle tint of the wall behind the Gothic well at Ratisbonne, and
compare this manly piece of work with the wretched smoothness of recent
lithography. Let it not be thought that there is any inconsistency
between what I say here and what I have said respecting finish. This
piece of dead wall is as much finished in relation to its function as
a wall of Ghirlandajo's or Leonardo's in relation to theirs, and the
refreshing quality is the same in both, and manifest in all great
masters, without exception, that of the utter regardlessness of the
means so that their end be reached. The same kind of scrawling occurs
often in the shade of Raffaelle.
It is not only, however, by his peculiar stone touch nor perception of
human character that he is distinguished. He § 32. His excellent
composition and color.is the most dexterous of all our artists in a
certain kind of composition. No one can place figures like him, except
Turner. It is one thing to know where a piece of blue or white is
wanted, and another to make the wearer of the blue apron or white cap
come there, and not look as if it were against her will. Prout's streets
are the only streets that are accidentally crowded, his markets are the
only markets where one feels inclined to get out of the way. With others
we feel the figures so right where they are, that we have no expectation
of their going anywhere else, and approve of the position of the man
with the wheelbarrow, without the slightest fear of his running against
our legs. One other merit he has, far less generally acknowledged than
it should be: he is among our most sunny and substantial colorists. Much
conventional color occurs in his inferior pictures (for he is very
unequal) and some in all; but portions are always to be found of quality
so luminous and pure that I have found these works the only ones capable
of bearing juxtaposition with Turner and Hunt, who
invariably destroy everything else that comes within range of them. His
most beautiful tones occur in those drawings in which there is prevalent
and powerful warm gray, his most failing ones in those of sandy red. On
his deficiencies I shall not insist, because I am not prepared to say
how far it is possible for him to avoid them. We have never seen the
reconciliation of the peculiar characters he has obtained with the
accurate following out of architectural detail. With his present modes
of execution, farther fidelity is impossible, nor has any other mode of
execution yet obtained the same results; and though much is
unaccomplished by him in certain subjects, and something of
over-mannerism may be traced in his treatment of others, as especially
in his mode of expressing the decorative parts of Greek or Roman
architecture, yet in his own peculiar Gothic territory, where the spirit
of the subject itself is somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of
decoration has more of the spirit of the reality than far more laborious
imitation. The spirit of the Flemish Hotel de Ville and decorated street
architecture has never been even in the slightest degree felt or
conveyed except by him, and by him, to my mind, faultlessly and
absolutely; and though his interpretation of architecture that contains
more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still it is
impossible, while walking on his favorite angle of the Piazzetta at
Venice, either to think of any other artist than Prout or not to think
of him.
Many other dexterous and agreeable architectural artists we § 33. Modern
architectural painting generally. G. Cattermole.have of various degrees
of merit, but of all of whom, it may be generally said, that they draw
hats, faces, cloaks, and caps much better than Prout, but figures not so
well; that they draw walls and windows but not cities, mouldings and
buttresses but not cathedrals. Joseph Nash's work on the architecture of
the middle ages is, however, valuable, and I suppose that Haghe's works
may be depended on for fidelity. But it appears very strange that a
workman capable of producing the clever drawings he has, from time to
time, sent to the New Society of Painters in Water Colors, should
publish lithographs so conventional, forced, and lifeless.
It is not without hesitation, that I mention a name respecting which the reader may already have been surprised at my silence,
that of G. Cattermole. There are signs in his works of very peculiar
gifts, and perhaps also of powerful genius; their deficiencies I should
willingly attribute to the advice of ill-judging friends, and to the
applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, if brilliant; yet I
cannot but think it one necessary characteristic of all true genius to
be misled by no such false fires. The Antiquarian feeling of Cattermole
is pure, earnest, and natural; and I think his imagination originally
vigorous, certainly his fancy, his grasp of momentary passion
considerable, his sense of action in the human body vivid and ready. But
no original talent, however brilliant, can sustain its energy when the
demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food
withdrawn. I do not recollect in any, even of the most important of
Cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from
nature. Violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms
continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with
the same stucco color, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress,
or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary brown, forever tell the same
tale of a mind wasting its strength and substance in the production of
emptiness, and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded handling, to
conceal the weakness which the attempt at finish would betray.
This tendency of late, has been painfully visible in his architecture.
Some drawings made several years ago for an annual illustrative of
Scott's works were for the most part pure and finely felt—(though
irrelevant to our present subject, a fall of the Clyde should be
noticed, admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and for the bold
sweeping of the water, and another subject of which I regret that I can
only judge by the engraving; Glendearg at twilight—the monk Eustace
chased by Christie of the Clint hill—which I think must have been one
of the sweetest pieces of simple Border hill feeling ever painted)—and
about that time his architecture, though always conventionally brown in
the shadows, was generally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived.
Since then, he has been tending gradually through exaggeration to
caricature, and vainly endeavoring to attain by inordinate
bulk of decorated parts, that dignity which is only to be reached by
purity of proportion and majesty of line.
It has pained me deeply, to see an artist of so great original power
indulging in childish fantasticism and exaggeration, and substituting
for the serious and subdued work of legitimate § 34. The evil in an
archæological point of view of misapplied invention in architectural
subject.imagination, monstre machicolations and colossal cusps and
crockets. While there is so much beautiful architecture daily in process
of destruction around us, I cannot but think it treason to imagine
anything; at least, if we must have composition, let the design of the
artist be such as the architect would applaud. But it is surely very
grievous, that while our idle artists are helping their vain inventions
by the fall of sponges on soiled paper, glorious buildings with the
whole intellect and history of centuries concentrated in them, are
suffered to fall into unrecorded ruin. A day does not now pass in Italy
without the destruction of some mighty monument; the streets of all her
cities echo to the hammer, half of her fair buildings lie in separate
stones about the places of their foundation; would not time be better
spent in telling us the truth about these perishing remnants of majestic
thought, than in perpetuating the ill-digested fancies of idle hours? It
is, I repeat, treason to the cause of art for any man to invent, unless
he invents something better than has been invented before, or something
differing in kind. There is room enough for invention in the pictorial
treatment of what exists. There is no more honorable exhibition of
imaginative power, than in the selection of such place, choice of such
treatment, introduction of such incident, as may produce a noble picture
without deviation from one line of the actual truth; and such I believe
to be, indeed, in the end the most advantageous, as well as the most
modest direction of the invention, for I recollect no single instance of
architectural composition by any men except such as Leonardo or
Veronese, who could design their architecture thoroughly before they
painted it, which has not a look of inanity and absurdity. The best
landscapes and the best architectural studies have been views; and I
would have the artist take shame to himself in the exact degree in which
he finds himself obliged in the production of his picture to lose any,
even of the smallest parts or most trivial hues which bear a part in the
great impression made by the reality. The difference between
the drawing of the architect and artist[13] ought never to be, as it now
commonly is, the difference between lifeless formality and witless
license; it ought to be between giving the mere lines and measures of a
building, and giving those lines and measures with the impression and
soul of it besides. All artists should be ashamed of themselves when
they find they have not the power of being true; the right wit of
drawing is like the right wit of conversation, not hyperbole, not
violence, not frivolity, only well expressed, laconic truth.
Among the members of the Academy, we have at present only one
professedly architectural draughtsman of note, David Roberts, whose
reputation is probably farther extended on the § 35. Works of David
Roberts: their fidelity and grace.continent than that of any other of
our artists, except Landseer. I am not certain, however, that I have any
reason to congratulate either of my countrymen upon this their European
estimation; for I think it exceedingly probable that in both instances
it is exclusively based on their defects; and in the case of Mr.
Roberts, in particular, there has of late appeared more ground for it
than is altogether desirable in a smoothness and over-finish of texture
which bears dangerous fellowship with the work of our Gallic neighbors.
The fidelity of intention and honesty of system of Roberts have,
however, always been meritorious; his drawing of architecture is
dependent on no unintelligible lines, or blots, or substituted types:
the main lines of the real design are always there, and its hollowness
and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling; his sense of solidity of
form is very peculiar, leading him to dwell with great delight on the
roundings of edges and angles; his execution is dexterous and delicate,
singularly so in oil, and his sense of chiaroscuro refined. But he has
never done himself justice, and suffers his pictures to fall below the
rank they should assume, by the presence of several marring characters,
which I shall name, because it is perfectly in his power to avoid them.
In looking over the valuable series of drawing of the Holy Land, which
we owe to Mr. Roberts, we cannot but be amazed to find how
frequently it has happened that there was something very white
immediately in the foreground, and something very black exactly behind
it. The same thing happens perpetually with Mr. Roberts's pictures; a
white column is always coming out of a blue mist, or a white stone out
of a green pool, or a white monument out of a brown recess, and the
artifice is not always concealed with dexterity. This is unworthy of so
skilful a composer, and it has destroyed the impressiveness as well as
the color of some of his finest works. It shows a poverty of conception,
which appears to me to arise from a deficient habit of study. It will be
remembered that of the sketches for this work, several times exhibited
in London, every one was executed in the same manner, and with about the
same degree of completion: being all of them accurate records of the
main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows, and the remnants of
artificial color, obtained, by means of the same grays, throughout, and
of the same yellow (a singularly false and cold though convenient color)
touched upon the lights. As far as they went, nothing could be more
valuable than these sketches, and the public, glancing rapidly at their
general and graceful effects, could hardly form anything like an
estimate of the endurance and determination which must have been
necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, entire, and
clear, of details so multitudinous as (especially) the hieroglyphics of
the Egyptian temples; an endurance which perhaps only artists can
estimate, and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Roberts most
difficult to discharge. But if these sketches were all that the artist
brought home, whatever value is to be attached to them as statements of
fact, they are altogether insufficient for the producing of pictures. I
saw among them no single instance of a downright study; of a study in
which the real hues and shades of sky and earth had been honestly
realized or attempted; nor were there, on the other hand, any of those
invaluable-blotted-five-minutes works which record the unity of some
single and magnificent impressions. Hence the pictures which have been
painted from these sketches have been as much alike in their want of
impressiveness as the sketches themselves, and have never borne the
living aspect of the Egyptian light; it has always been impossible to
say whether the red in them (not a pleasant one) was meant
for hot sunshine or for red sandstone—their power has been farther
destroyed by the necessity the artist seems to feel himself under of
eking out their effect by points of bright foreground color, and thus we
have been encumbered with caftans, pipes, scymetars, and black hair,
when all that we wanted was a lizard, or an ibis. It is perhaps owing to
this want of earnestness in study rather than to deficiency of
perception, that the coloring of this artist is commonly untrue. Some
time ago when he was painting Spanish subjects, his habit was to bring
out his whites in relief from transparent bituminous browns, which
though not exactly right in color, were at any rate warm and agreeable;
but of late his color has become cold, waxy, and opaque, and in his deep
shades he sometimes permits himself the use of a violent black which is
altogether unjustifiable. A picture of Roslin Chapel exhibited in 1844,
showed this defect in the recess to which the stairs descend, in an
extravagant degree; and another exhibited in the British Institution,
instead of showing the exquisite crumbling and lichenous texture of the
Roslin stone, was polished to as vapid smoothness as every French
historical picture. The general feebleness of the effect is increased by
the insertion of the figures as violent pieces of local color unaffected
by the light and unblended with the hues around them, and bearing
evidence of having been painted from models or draperies in the dead
light of a room instead of sunshine. On these deficiencies I should not
have remarked, but that by honest and determined painting from and of
nature, it is perfectly in the power of the artist to supply them; and
it is bitterly to be regretted that the accuracy and elegance of his
work should not be aided by that genuineness of hue and effect which can
only be given by the uncompromising effort to paint not a fine picture
but an impressive and known verity.
The two artists whose works it remains for us to review, are men who
have presented us with examples of the treatment of every kind of
subject, and among the rest with portions of architecture which the best
of our exclusively architectural draughtsmen could not excel.
The frequent references made to the works of Clarkson Stanfield
throughout the subsequent pages render it less necessary for
me to speak of him here at any length. He is the leader of the English
Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his § 36. Clarkson
Stanfield.characteristics is the look of common-sense and rationality
which his compositions will always bear when opposed to any kind of
affectation. He appears to think of no other artist. What he has
learned, has been from his own acquaintance with and affection for the
steep hills and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment are alike
removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and from exaggeration or
effort. The somewhat over-prosaic tone of his subjects is rather a
condescension to what he supposes to be public feeling, than a sign of
want of feeling in himself; for in some of his sketches from nature or
from fancy, I have seen powers and perceptions manifested of a far
higher order than any that are traceable in his Academy works, powers
which I think him much to be blamed for checking. The portion of his
pictures usually most defective in this respect is the sky, which is apt
to be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a kind of
hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul weather; they
having neither the joyfulness of rest, nor the majesty of storm. Their
color is apt also to verge on a morbid purple, as was eminently the case
in the large picture of the wreck on the coast of Holland exhibited in
1844, a work in which both his powers and faults were prominently
manifested, the picture being full of good painting, but wanting in its
entire appeal. There was no feeling of wreck about it; and, but for the
damage about her bowsprit, it would have been impossible for a landsman
to say whether the hull was meant for a wreck or a guardship.
Nevertheless, it is always to be recollected, that in subjects of this
kind it is probable that much escapes us in consequence of our want of
knowledge, and that to the eye of the seaman much may be of interest and
value which to us appears cold. At all events, this healthy and rational
regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dramatic absurdities
which weaker artists commit in matters marine; and from copper-colored
sunsets on green waves sixty feet high, with cauliflower breakers, and
ninepin rocks; from drowning on planks, and starving on rafts, and lying
naked on beaches, it is really refreshing to turn to a surge of
Stanfield's true salt, serviceable, unsentimental sea. It
would be well, however, if he would sometimes take a higher flight. The
castle of Ischia gave him a grand subject, and a little more invention
in the sky, a little less muddiness in the rocks, and a little more
savageness in the sea, would have made it an impressive picture; it just
misses the sublime, yet is a fine work, and better engraved than usual
by the Art Union.
One fault we cannot but venture to find, even in our own extreme
ignorance, with Mr. Stanfield's boats; they never look weather-beaten.
There is something peculiarly precious in the rusty, dusty,
tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this
has just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is enough to
drive Giorgione to despair. I have never seen any effort at this by
Stanfield; his boats always look new painted and clean; witness
especially the one before the ship in the wreck picture above noticed;
and there is some such absence of a right sense of color in other
portions of his subject; even his fishermen have always clean jackets
and unsoiled caps, and his very rocks are lichenless. And, by the way,
this ought to be noted respecting modern painters in general, that they
have not a proper sense of the value of dirt; cottage children never
appear but in fresh got-up caps and aprons, and white-handed beggars
excite compassion in unexceptionable rags. In reality, almost all the
colors of things associated with human life derive something of their
expression and value from the tones of impurity, and so enhance the
value of the entirely pure tints of nature herself. Of Stanfield's rock
and mountain drawing enough will be said hereafter. His foliage is
inferior; his architecture admirably drawn, but commonly wanting in
color. His picture of the Doge's palace at Venice was quite clay-cold
and untrue. Of late he has shown a marvellous predilection for the
realization, even to actually relieved texture, of old worm-eaten wood;
we trust he will not allow such fancies to carry him too far.
The name I have last to mention is that of J. M. W. Turner. I do not
intend to speak of this artist at present in general terms, because my
constant practice throughout this work is to say, when I speak of an
artist at all, the very truth of what I believe and feel respecting him;
and the truth of what I believe and feel respecting Turner
would appear in this place, unsupported by any proof, mere rhapsody. I
shall therefore here confine § 37. J. M. W. Turner. Force of national
feeling in all great painters.myself to a rapid glance at the relations
of his past and present works, and to some notice of what he has failed
of accomplishing: the greater part of the subsequent chapters will be
exclusively devoted to the examination of the new fields over which he
has extended the range of landscape art.
It is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or acted upon,
that all great painters, of whatever school, have been great only in
their rendering of what they had seen and felt from early childhood; and
that the greatest among them have been the most frank in acknowledging
this their inability to treat anything successfully but that with which
they had been familiar. The Madonna of Raffaelle was born on the Urbino
mountains, Ghirlandajo's is a Florentine, Bellini's a Venetian; there is
not the slightest effort on the part of any one of these great men to
paint her as a Jewess. It is not the place here to insist farther on a
point so simple and so universally demonstrable. Expression, character,
types of countenance, costume, color, and accessories are with all great
painters whatsoever those of their native land, and that frankly and
entirely, without the slightest attempt at modification; and I assert
fearlessly that it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise, and
that no man ever painted or ever will paint well anything but what he
has early and long seen, early and long felt, and early and long loved.
How far it is possible for the mind of one nation or generation to be
healthily modified and taught by the work of another, I presume not to
determine; but it depends upon whether the energy of the mind which
receives the instruction be sufficient, while it takes out of what it
feeds upon that which is universal and common to all nature, to resist
all warping from national or temporary peculiarities. Nino Pisano got
nothing but good, the modern French nothing but evil, from the study of
the antique; but Nino Pisano had a God and a character. All artists who
have attempted to assume, or in their weakness have been affected by,
the national peculiarities of other times and countries, have instantly,
whatever their original power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen
altogether, and have invariably lost their birthright and
blessing, lost their power over the human heart, lost all capability of
teaching or benefiting others. Compare the hybrid classification of
Wilson with the rich English purity of Gainsborough; compare the recent
exhibition of middle-age cartoons for the Houses of Parliament with the
works of Hogarth; compare the sickly modern German imitations of the
great Italians with Albert Durer and Holbein; compare the vile
classicality of Canova and the modern Italians with Mino da Fiesole,
Luca della Robbia, and Andrea del Verrocchio. The manner of Nicolo
Poussin is said to be Greek—it may be so; this only I know, that it is
heartless and profitless. The severity of the rule, however, extends not
in full force to the nationality, but only to the visibility of things;
for it is very possible for an artist of powerful mind to throw himself
well into the feeling of foreign nations of his own time. Thus John
Lewis has been eminently successful in his seizing of Spanish character.
Yet it may be doubted if the seizure be such as Spaniards themselves
would acknowledge; it is probably of the habits of the people more than
their hearts; continued efforts of this kind, especially if their
subjects be varied, assuredly end in failure; Lewis, who seemed so
eminently penetrative in Spain, sent nothing from Italy but complexions
and costumes, and I expect no good from his stay in Egypt. English
artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in Italy, but for this
there are collateral causes which it is not here the place to examine.
Be this as it may, and whatever success may be attained in pictures of
slight and unpretending aim, of genre, as they are called, in the
rendering of foreign character, of this I am certain, that whatever is
to be truly great and affecting must have on it the strong stamp of the
native land; not a law this, but a necessity, from the intense hold on
their country of the affections of all truly great men; all
classicality, all middle-age patent reviving, is utterly vain and
absurd; if we are now to do anything great, good, awful, religious, it
must be got out of our own little island, and out of this year 1846,
railroads and all: if a British painter, I say this in earnest
seriousness, cannot make historical characters out of the British House
of Peers, he cannot paint history; and if he cannot make a Madonna of a
British girl of the nineteenth century, he cannot paint one at all.
The rule, of course, holds in landscape; yet so far less
authoritatively, that the material nature of all countries and times is
in many points actually, and in all, in principle, the § 38. Influence
of this feeling on the choice of Landscape subject.same; so that
feelings educated in Cumberland, may find their food in Switzerland, and
impressions first received among the rocks of Cornwall, be recalled upon
the precipices of Genoa. Add to this actual sameness, the power of every
great mind to possess itself of the spirit of things once presented to
it, and it is evident, that little limitation can be set to the
landscape painter as to the choice of his field; and that the law of
nationality will hold with him only so far as a certain joyfulness and
completion will be by preference found in those parts of his subject
which remind him of his own land. But if he attempt to impress on his
landscapes any other spirit than that he has felt, and to make them
landscapes of other times, it is all over with him, at least, in the
degree in which such reflected moonshine takes place of the genuine
light of the present day.
The reader will at once perceive how much trouble this simple principle
will save both the painter and the critic; it at once sets aside the
whole school of common composition, and exonerates us from the labor of
minutely examining any landscape which has nymphs or philosophers in it.
It is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle by any
reference to the works of early landscape painters, as I suppose it is
universally acknowledged with respect to them; Titian being the most
remarkable instance of the influence of the native air on a strong mind,
and Claude, of that of the classical poison on a weak one; but it is
very necessary to keep it in mind in reviewing the works of our great
modern landscape painter.
I do not know in what district of England Turner first or longest
studied, but the scenery whose influence I can trace most definitely
throughout his works, varied as they are, is that § 39. Its peculiar
manifestation in Turner.of Yorkshire. Of all his drawings, I think,
those of the Yorkshire series have the most heart in them, the most
affectionate, simple, unwearied, serious finishing of truth. There is in
them little seeking after effect, but a strong love of place, little
exhibition of the artist's own powers or peculiarities, but intense
appreciation of the smallest local minutiæ. These drawings
have unfortunately changed hands frequently, and have been abused and
ill treated by picture dealers and cleaners; the greater number of them,
are now mere wrecks. I name them not as instances, but as proofs of the
artist's study in this district; for the affection to which they owe
their excellence, must have been grounded long years before. It is to be
traced, not only in these drawings of the places themselves, but in the
peculiar love of the painter for rounded forms of hills; not but that he
is right in this on general principles, for I doubt not, that, with his
peculiar feeling for beauty of line, his hills would have been rounded
still, even if he had studied first among the peaks of Cadore; but
rounded to the same extent and with the same delight in their roundness,
they would not have been. It is, I believe, to those broad wooded steeps
and swells of the Yorkshire downs that we in part owe the singular
massiveness that prevails in Turner's mountain drawing, and gives it one
of its chief elements of grandeur. Let the reader open the Liber
Studiorum, and compare the painter's enjoyment of the lines in the Ben
Arthur, with his comparative uncomfortableness among those of the
aiguilles about the Mer de Glace. Great as he is, those peaks would have
been touched very differently by a Savoyard as great as he.
I am in the habit of looking to the Yorkshire drawings, as indicating
one of the culminating points in Turner's career. In these he attained
the highest degree of what he had up to that time attempted, namely,
finish and quantity of form united with expression of atmosphere, and
light without color. His early drawings are singularly instructive in
this definiteness and simplicity of aim. No complicated or brilliant
color is ever thought of in them; they are little more than exquisite
studies in light and shade, very green blues being used for the shadows,
and golden browns for the lights. The difficulty and treachery of color
being thus avoided, the artist was able to bend his whole mind upon the
drawing, and thus to attain such decision, delicacy, and completeness as
have never in any wise been equalled, and as might serve him for a
secure foundation in all after experiments. Of the quantity and
precision of his details, the drawings made for Hakewill's Italy, are
singular examples. The most perfect gem in execution is a little bit on
the Rhine, with reeds in the foreground, in the possession
of B. G. Windus, Esq., of Tottenham; but the Yorkshire drawings seem to
be on the whole the most noble representatives of his art at this
period.
About the time of their production, the artist seems to have felt that
he had done either all that could be done, or all that was necessary, in
that manner, and began to reach after something beyond it. The element
of color begins to mingle with his work, and in the first efforts to
reconcile his intense feeling for it with his careful form, several
anomalies begin to be visible, and some unfortunate or uninteresting
works necessarily belong to the period. The England drawings, which are
very characteristic of it, are exceedingly unequal,—some, as the
Oakhampton, Kilgarren, Alnwick, and Llanthony, being among his finest
works; others, as the Windsor from Eton, the Eton College, and the
Bedford, showing coarseness and conventionality.
I do not know at what time the painter first went abroad, but among the
earliest of the series of the Liber Studiorum (dates 1808, 1809,) occur
the magnificent Mont St. Gothard, and § 40. The domestic subjects of the
Liber Studiorum.little Devil's Bridge. Now it is remarkable that after
his acquaintance with this scenery, so congenial in almost all respects
with the energy of his mind, and supplying him with materials of which
in these two subjects, and in the Chartreuse, and several others
afterwards, he showed both his entire appreciation and command, the
proportion of English to foreign subjects should in the rest of the work
be more than two to one; and that those English subjects should be—many
of them—of a kind peculiarly simple, and of every-day occurrence, such
as the Pembury Mill, the Farm Yard Composition with the White Horse,
that with the Cocks and Pigs, Hedging and Ditching, Watercress Gatherers
(scene at Twickenham,) and the beautiful and solemn rustic subject
called a Watermill; and that the architectural subjects instead of being
taken, as might have been expected of an artist so fond of treating
effects of extended space, from some of the enormous continental masses
are almost exclusively British; Rivaulx, Holy Island, Dumblain,
Dunstanborough, Chepstow, St. Catherine's, Greenwich Hospital, an
English Parish Church, a Saxon Ruin, and an exquisite Reminiscence of
the English Lowland Castle in the pastoral, with the brook, wooden
bridge, and wild duck, to all of which we have nothing
foreign to oppose but three slight, ill-considered, and unsatisfactory
subjects, from Basle, Lauffenbourg, and another Swiss village; and,
further, not only is the preponderance of subject British, but of
affection also; for it is strange with what fulness and completion the
home subjects are treated in comparison with the greater part of the
foreign ones. Compare the figures and sheep in the Hedging and Ditching,
and the East Gate Winchelsea, together with the near leafage, with the
puzzled foreground and inappropriate figures of the Lake of Thun; or the
cattle and road of the St. Catherine's Hill, with the foreground of the
Bonneville; or the exquisite figure with the sheaf of corn, in the
Watermill, with the vintages of the Grenoble subject.
In his foliage the same predilections are remarkable. Reminiscences of
English willows by the brooks, and English forest glades mingle even
with the heroic foliage of the Æsacus and Hesperie, and the Cephalus;
into the pine, whether of Switzerland or the glorious Stone, he cannot
enter, or enters at his peril, like Ariel. Those of the Valley of
Chamounix are fine masses, better pines than other people's, but not a
bit like pines for all that; he feels his weakness, and tears them off
the distant mountains with the mercilessness of an avalanche. The Stone
pines of the two Italian compositions are fine in their arrangement, but
they are very pitiful pines; the glory of the Alpine rose he never
touches; he munches chestnuts with no relish; never has learned to like
olives; and, by the vine, we find him in the foreground of the Grenoble
Alps laid utterly and incontrovertibly on his back.
I adduce these evidences of Turner's nationality (and innumerable others
might be given if need were) not as proofs of weakness but of power; not
so much as testifying want of perception in foreign lands, as strong
hold on his own will; for I am sure that no artist who has not this hold
upon his own will ever get good out of any other. Keeping this principle
in mind, it is instructive to observe the depth and solemnity which
Turner's feeling received from the scenery of the continent, the keen
appreciation up to a certain point of all that is locally
characteristic, and the ready seizure for future use of all valuable
material.
Of all foreign countries he has most entirely entered into the spirit of
France; partly because here he found more fellowship of scene with his
own England, partly because an amount of § 41. Turner's painting of
French and Swiss landscape. The latter deficient.thought which will miss
of Italy or Switzerland, will fathom France; partly because there is in
the French foliage and forms of ground, much that is especially
congenial with his own peculiar choice of form. To what cause it is
owing I cannot tell, nor is it generally allowed or felt; but of the
fact I am certain, that for grace of stem and perfection of form in
their transparent foliage, the French trees are altogether unmatched;
and their modes of grouping and massing are so perfectly and constantly
beautiful that I think of all countries for educating an artist to the
perception of grace, France bears the bell; and that not romantic nor
mountainous France, not the Vosges, nor Auvergne, nor Provence, but
lowland France, Picardy and Normandy, the valleys of the Loire and
Seine, and even the district, so thoughtlessly and mindlessly abused by
English travellers, as uninteresting, traversed between Calais and
Dijon; of which there is not a single valley but is full of the most
lovely pictures, nor a mile from which the artist may not receive
instruction; the district immediately about Sens being perhaps the most
valuable from the grandeur of its lines of poplars and the unimaginable
finish and beauty of the tree forms in the two great avenues without the
walls. Of this kind of beauty Turner was the first to take cognizance,
and he still remains the only, but in himself the sufficient painter of
French landscape. One of the most beautiful examples is the drawing of
trees engraved for the Keepsake, now in the possession of B. G. Windus,
Esq.; the drawings made to illustrate the scenery of the Rivers of
France supply instances of the most varied character.
The artist appears, until very lately, rather to have taken from
Switzerland thoughts and general conceptions of size and of grand form
and effect to be used in his after compositions, than to have attempted
the seizing of its actual character. This was beforehand to be expected
from the utter physical impossibility of rendering certain effects of
Swiss scenery, and the monotony and unmanageableness of others. The
Valley of Chamounix in the collection of Walter Fawkes, Esq., I have
never seen; it has a high reputation; the Hannibal passing
the Alps in its present state exhibits nothing but a heavy shower and a
crowd of people getting wet; another picture in the artist's gallery of
a land-fall is most masterly and interesting, but more daring than
agreeable. The Snowstorm, avalanche, and inundation, is one of his
mightiest works, but the amount of mountain drawing in it is less than
of cloud and effect; the subjects in the Liber Studiorum are on the
whole the most intensely felt, and next to them the vignettes to
Rogers's Poems and Italy. Of some recent drawings of Swiss subject I
shall speak presently.
The effect of Italy upon his mind is very puzzling. On the one hand, it
gave him the solemnity and power which are manifested in the historical
compositions of the Liber Studiorum, § 42. His rendering of Italian
character still less successful. His large compositions how failing.more
especially the Rizpah, the Cephalus, the scene from the Fairy Queen, and
the Æsacus and Hesperie: on the other, he seems never to have entered
thoroughly into the spirit of Italy, and the materials he obtained there
were afterwards but awkwardly introduced in his large compositions.
Of these there are very few at all worthy of him; none but the Liber
Studiorum subjects are thoroughly great, and these are great because
there is in them the seriousness without the materials of other
countries and times. There is nothing particularly indicative of
Palestine in the Barley Harvest of the Rizpah, nor in those round and
awful trees; only the solemnity of the south in the lifting of the near
burning moon. The rocks of the Jason may be seen in any quarry of
Warwickshire sandstone. Jason himself has not a bit of Greek about
him—he is a simple warrior of no period in particular, nay, I think
there is something of the nineteenth century about his legs. When local
character of this classical kind is attempted, the painter is visibly
cramped: awkward resemblances to Claude testify the want of his usual
forceful originality: in the tenth Plague of Egypt, he makes us think of
Belzoni rather than of Moses; the fifth is a total failure, the pyramids
look like brick-kilns, and the fire running along the ground bears
brotherly resemblance to the burning of manure. The realization of the
tenth plague now in his gallery is finer than the study, but still
uninteresting; and of the large compositions which have much of Italy in
them, the greater part are overwhelmed with quantity and
deficient in emotion. The Crossing the Brook is one of the best of these
hybrid pictures; incomparable in its tree drawing, it yet leaves us
doubtful where we are to look and what we are to feel; it is northern in
its color, southern in its foliage, Italy in its details, and England in
its sensations, without the grandeur of the one, or the healthiness of
the other.
The two Carthages are mere rationalizations of Claude, one of them
excessively bad in color, the other a grand thought, and yet one of the
kind which does no one any good, because everything in it is
reciprocally sacrificed; the foliage is sacrificed to the architecture,
the architecture to the water, the water is neither sea, nor river, nor
lake, nor brook, nor canal, and savors of Regent's Park; the foreground
is uncomfortable ground,—let on building leases. So the Caligula's
Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, Departure of Regulus, Ancient Italy, Cicero's
Villa, and such others, come they from whose hand they may, I class
under the general head of "nonsense pictures." There never can be any
wholesome feeling developed in these preposterous accumulations, and
where the artist's feeling fails, his art follows; so that the worst
possible examples of Turner's color are found in pictures of this class;
in one or two instances he has broken through the conventional rules,
and then is always fine, as in the Hero and Leander; but in general the
picture rises in value as it approaches to a view, as the Fountain of
Fallacy, a piece of rich northern Italy, with some fairy waterworks;
this picture was unrivalled in color once, but is now a mere wreck. So
the Rape of Proserpine, though it is singular that in his Academy
pictures even his simplicity fails of reaching ideality; in this picture
of Proserpine the nature is not the grand nature of all time, it is
indubitably modern,[14] and we are perfectly electrified at anybody's
being carried away in the corner except by people with spiky
hats and carabines. This is traceable to several causes; partly to the
want of any grand specific form, partly to the too evident middle-age
character of the ruins crowning the hills, and to a multiplicity of
minor causes which we cannot at present enter into.
Neither in his actual views of Italy has Turner ever caught her true
spirit, except in the little vignettes to Rogers's Poems. The Villa of
Galileo, the nameless composition with stone pines, § 43. His views of
Italy destroyed by brilliancy and redundant quantity.the several villa
moonlights, and the convent compositions in the Voyage of Columbus, are
altogether exquisite; but this is owing chiefly to their simplicity and
perhaps in some measure to their smallness of size. None of his large
pictures at all equal them; the Bay of Baiæ is encumbered with
material, it contains ten times as much as is necessary to a good
picture, and yet is so crude in color as to look unfinished. The
Palestrina is fall of raw white, and has a look of Hampton Court about
its long avenue; the modern Italy is purely English in its near foliage;
it is composed from Tivoli material enriched and arranged most
dexterously, but it has the look of a rich arrangement, and not the
virtue of the real thing. The early Tivoli, a large drawing taken from
below the falls, was as little true, and still less fortunate, the trees
there being altogether affected and artificial. The Florence engraved in
the Keepsake is a glorious drawing, as far as regards the passage with
the bridge and sunlight on the Arno, the Cascine foliage, and distant
plain, and the towers of the fortress on the left; but the details of
the duomo and the city are entirely missed, and with them the majesty of
the whole scene. The vines and melons of the foreground are disorderly,
and its cypresses conventional; in fact, I recollect no instance of
Turner's drawing a cypress except in general terms.
The chief reason of these failures I imagine to be the effort of the
artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of effect upon scenes eminently
pensive, to substitute radiance for serenity of light, and to force the
freedom and breadth of line which he learned to love on English downs
and Highland moors, out of a country dotted by campaniles and square
convents, bristled with cypresses, partitioned by walls, and gone up and
down by steps.
In one of the cities of Italy he had no such difficulties to
encounter. At Venice he found freedom of space, brilliancy of light,
variety of color, massy simplicity of general form; and to Venice we owe
many of the motives in which his highest powers of color have been
displayed after that change in his system of which we must now take
note.
Among the earlier paintings of Turner, the culminating period, marked by
the Yorkshire series in his drawings, is distinguished by great
solemnity and simplicity of subject, prevalent § 44. Changes introduced
by him in the received system of art.gloom in light and shade, and brown
in the hue, the drawing manly but careful, the minutiæ sometimes
exquisitely delicate. All the finest works of this period are, I
believe, without exception, views, or quiet single thoughts. The Calder
Bridge, belonging to E. Bicknell, Esq., is a most pure and beautiful
example. The Ivy Bridge I imagine to be later, but its rock foreground
is altogether unrivalled and remarkable for its delicacy of detail; a
butterfly is seen settled on one of the large brown stones in the midst
of the torrent. Two paintings of Bonneville, in Savoy, one in the
possession of Abel Allnutt, Esq., the other, and, I think, the finest,
in a collection at Birmingham, show more variety of color than is usual
with him at the period, and are in every respect magnificent examples.
Pictures of this class are of peculiar value, for the larger
compositions of the same period are all poor in color, and most of them
much damaged, but the smaller works have been far finer originally, and
their color seems secure. There is nothing in the range of landscape art
equal to them in their way, but the full character and capacity of the
painter is not in them. Grand as they are in their sobriety, they still
leave much to be desired; there is great heaviness in their shadows, the
material is never thoroughly vanquished, (though this partly for a very
noble reason, that the painter is always thinking of and referring to
nature, and indulges in no artistical conventionalities,) and sometimes
the handling appears feeble. In warmth, lightness, and transparency they
have no chance against Gainsborough; in clear skies and air tone they
are alike unfortunate when they provoke comparison with Claude; and in
force and solemnity they can in no wise stand with the landscape of the
Venetians.
The painter evidently felt that he had farther powers, and
pressed forward into the field where alone they could be brought into
play. It was impossible for him, with all his keen and long-disciplined
perceptions, not to feel that the real color of nature had never been
attempted by any school; and that though conventional representations
had been given by the Venetians of sunlight and twilight, by invariably
rendering the whites golden and the blues green, yet of the actual,
joyous, pure, roseate hues of the external world no record had ever been
given. He saw also that the finish and specific grandeur of nature had
been given, but her fulness, space, and mystery never; and he saw that
the great landscape painters had always sunk the lower middle tints of
nature in extreme shade, bringing the entire melody of color as many
degrees down as their possible light was inferior to nature's; and that
in so doing a gloomy principle had influenced them even in their choice
of subject.
For the conventional color he substituted a pure straightforward
rendering of fact, as far as was in his power; and that not of such fact
as had been before even suggested, but of all that is most brilliant,
beautiful, and inimitable; he went to the cataract for its iris, to the
conflagration for its flames, asked of the sea its intensest azure, of
the sky its clearest gold. For the limited space and defined forms of
elder landscape, he substituted the quantity and the mystery of the
vastest scenes of earth; and for the subdued chiaroscuro he substituted
first a balanced diminution of oppositions throughout the scale, and
afterwards, in one or two instances, attempted the reverse of the old
principle, taking the lowest portion of the scale truly, and merging the
upper part in high light.
Innovations so daring and so various could not be introduced without
corresponding peril: the difficulties that lay in his way were more than
any human intellect could altogether surmount. § 45. Difficulties of his
later manner. Resultant deficiencies.In his time there has been no one
system of color generally approved; every artist has his own method and
his own vehicle; how to do what Gainsborough did, we know not; much less
what Titian; to invent a new system of color can hardly be expected of
those who cannot recover the old. To obtain perfectly satisfactory
results in color under the new conditions introduced by Turner, would at
least have required the exertion of all his energies in that sole direction. But color has always been only his second object. The
effects of space and form, in which he delights, often require the
employment of means and method totally at variance with those necessary
for the obtaining of pure color. It is physically impossible, for
instance, rightly to draw certain forms of the upper clouds with the
brush; nothing will do it but the pallet knife with loaded white after
the blue ground is prepared. Now it is impossible that a cloud so drawn,
however glazed afterwards, should have the virtue of a thin warm tint of
Titian's, showing the canvas throughout. So it happens continually. Add
to these difficulties, those of the peculiar subjects attempted, and to
these again, all that belong to the altered system of chiaroscuro, and
it is evident that we must not be surprised at finding many deficiencies
or faults in such works, especially in the earlier of them, nor even
suffer ourselves to be withdrawn by the pursuit of what seems censurable
from our devotion to what is mighty.
Notwithstanding, in some chosen examples of pictures of this kind, I
will name three: Juliet and her Nurse; the Old Temeraire, and the Slave
Ship: I do not admit that there are at the time of their first appearing
on the walls of the Royal Academy, any demonstrably avoidable faults. I
do not deny that there may be, nay, that it is likely there are; but
there is no living artist in Europe whose judgment might safely be taken
on the subject, or who could without arrogance affirm of any part of
such a picture, that it was wrong; I am perfectly willing to allow,
that the lemon yellow is not properly representative of the yellow of
the sky, that the loading of the color is in many places disagreeable,
that many of the details are drawn with a kind of imperfection different
from what they would have in nature, and that many of the parts fail of
imitation, especially to an uneducated eye. But no living authority is
of weight enough to prove that the virtues of the picture could have
been obtained at a less sacrifice, or that they are not worth the
sacrifice; and though it is perfectly possible that such may be the
case, and that what Turner has done may hereafter in some respects be
done better, I believe myself that these works are at the time of their
first appearing as perfect as those of Phidias or Leonardo;
that is to say, incapable in their way, of any improvement conceivable
by human mind.
Also, it is only by comparison with such that we are authorized to
affirm definite faults in any of his others, for we should have been
bound to speak, at least for the present, with the same modesty
respecting even his worst pictures of this class, had not his more noble
efforts given us canons of criticism.
But, as was beforehand to be expected from the difficulties he grappled
with, Turner is exceedingly unequal; he appears always as a champion in
the thick of fight, sometimes with his foot on his enemies' necks,
sometimes staggered or struck to his knee; once or twice altogether
down. He has failed most frequently, as before noticed, in elaborate
compositions, from redundant quantity; sometimes, like most other men,
from over-care, as very signally in a large and most labored drawing of
Bamborough; sometimes, unaccountably, his eye for color seeming to fail
him for a time, as in a large painting of Rome from the Forum, and in
the Cicero's Villa, Building of Carthage, and the picture of this year
in the British Institution; and sometimes I am sorry to say, criminally,
from taking licenses which he must know to be illegitimate, or indulging
in conventionalities which he does not require.
 |
THE DOGANA, AND SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE.
From a painting by Turner. |
On such instances I shall not insist, for the finding fault with Turner
is not, I think, either decorous in myself or like to be beneficial to
the reader.[15] The greater number of failures took § 46.
Reflection of his very recent works.place in the transition period, when
the artist was feeling for the new qualities, and endeavoring to
reconcile them with more careful elaboration of form than was properly
consistent with them. Gradually his hand became more free, his
perception and grasp of the new truths more certain, and his choice of
subject more adapted to the exhibition of them. But his powers did not
attain their highest results till towards the year 1840, about which
period they did so suddenly, and with a vigor and concentration which
rendered his pictures at that time almost incomparable with those which
had preceded them. The drawings of Nemi, and Oberwesel, in the
possession of B. G. Windus, Esq., were among the first evidences of this
sudden advance; only the foliage in both of these is inferior; and it is
remarkable that in this phase of his art, Turner has drawn little
foliage, and that little badly—the great characteristic of
it being its power, beauty, and majesty of color, and its abandonment of
all littleness and division of thought to a single impression. In the
year 1842, he made some drawings from recent sketches in Switzerland;
these, with some produced in the following years, all of Swiss subject,
I consider to be, on the whole, the most characteristic and perfect
works he has ever produced. The Academy pictures were far inferior to
them; but among these examples of the same power were not wanting, more
especially in the smaller pictures of Venice. The Sun of Venice, going
to sea; the San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina; and a view of Murano,
with the Cemetery, were all faultless: another of Venice, seen from near
Fusina, with sunlight and moonlight mixed (1844) was, I think, when I
first saw it, (and it still remains little injured,) the most perfectly
beautiful piece of color of all that I have seen produced by human
hands, by any means, or at any period. Of the exhibition of 1845, I have
only seen a small Venice, (still I believe in the artist's possession,)
and the two whaling subjects. The Venice is a second-rate work, and the
two others altogether unworthy of him.
In conclusion of our present sketch of the course of landscape art, it
may be generally stated that Turner is the only painter, so far as I
know, who has ever drawn the sky, (not the clear sky, which we before
saw belonged exclusively to the religious schools, but the various forms
and phenomena of the cloudy heavens,) all previous artists having only
represented it typically or partially; but he absolutely and
universally: he is the only painter who has ever drawn a mountain, or a
stone; no other man ever having learned their organization, or possessed
himself of their spirit, except in part and obscurely, (the one or two
stones noted of Tintoret's, (Vol. II., Part III. Ch. 3,) are perhaps
hardly enough on which to found an exception in his favor.) He is the
only painter who ever drew the stem of a tree, Titian having come the
nearest before him, and excelling him in the muscular development of the
larger trunks, (though sometimes losing the woody strength in a
serpent-like flaccidity,) but missing the grace and character of the
ramifications. He is the only painter who has ever represented the
surface of calm, or the force of agitated water; who has represented the
effects of space on distant objects, or who has rendered the
abstract beauty of natural color. These assertions I make deliberately,
after careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of dispute, or
momentary zeal; but from strong and convinced feeling, and with the
consciousness of being able to prove them.
This proof is only partially and incidentally attempted in the present
portion of this work, which was originally written, as before explained,
for a temporary purpose, and which, therefore, I should have gladly
cancelled, but that, relating as it does only to simple matters of fact
and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be of service to
some readers who would be unwilling to enter into the more speculative
fields with which the § 47. Difficulty of demonstration in such
subjects.succeeding sections are concerned. I leave, therefore, nearly
as it was originally written, the following examination of the relative
truthfulness of elder and of recent art; always requesting the reader to
remember, as some excuse for the inadequate execution, even of what I
have here attempted, how difficult it is to express or explain, by
language only, those delicate qualities of the object of sense, on the
seizing of which all refined truth of representation depends. Try, for
instance, to explain in language the exact qualities of the lines on
which depend the whole truth and beauty of expression about the
half-opened lips of Raffaelle's St. Catherine. There is, indeed, nothing
in landscape so ineffable as this; but there is no part nor portion of
God's works in which the delicacy appreciable by a cultivated eye, and
necessary to be rendered in art, is not beyond all expression and
explanation; I cannot tell it you, if you do not see it. And thus I have
been entirely unable, in the following pages, to demonstrate clearly
anything of really deep and perfect truth; nothing but what is coarse
and commonplace, in matters to be judged of by the senses, is within the
reach of argument. How much or how little I have done must be judged of
by the reader: how much it is impossible to do I have more fully shown
in the concluding section.
I shall first take into consideration those general truths, common to
all the objects of nature, which are productive of what is usually
called "effect," that is to say, truths of tone, general color, space,
and light. I shall then investigate the truths of specific form and
color, in the four great component parts of landscape—sky, earth,
water, and vegetation.
Not the large Paradise, but the Fall of Adam, a small picture
chiefly in brown and gray, near Titian's Assumption. Its companion, the
Death of Abel, is remarkable as containing a group of trees which
Turner, I believe accidentally, has repeated nearly mass for mass in the
"Marly." Both are among the most noble works of this or any other
master, whether for preciousness of color or energy of thought.
The triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple,
probably gave it strange typical interest among the Christian painters.
Angelico, in using its leaves mixed with daisies in the foreground of
his Crucifixion had, I imagine, a view also to its chemical property.
This is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may
appear. From the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however numerous,
we have no right to conjecture his total inability; a time may come when
he may rise into sudden strength, or an instance occur when his efforts
shall be successful. But there are some pictures which rank not under
the head of failures, but of perpetrations or commissions; some things
which a man cannot do nor say without sealing forever his character and
capacity. The angel holding the cross with his finger in his eye, the
roaring red-faced children about the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (I
speak deliberately and determinedly) head of Christ upon the
handkerchief, and the mode in which the martyrdom of the saint is
exhibited (I do not choose to use the expressions which alone could
characterize it) are perfect, sufficient, incontrovertible proofs that
whatever appears good in any of the doings of such a painter must be
deceptive, and that we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and
false whenever we feel disposed to admire him. I am prepared to support
this position, however uncharitable it may seem; a man may be tempted
into a gross sin by passion, and forgiven; and yet there are some kinds
of sins into which only men of a certain kind can be tempted, and which
cannot be forgiven. It should be added, however, that the artistical
qualities of these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions
they realize; I do not recollect any instances of color or execution so
coarse and feelingless.
It appears not to be sufficiently understood by those artists who
complain acrimoniously of their positions on the Academy walls, that the
Academicians have in their own rooms a right to the line and the best
places near it; in their taking this position there is no abuse nor
injustice; but the Academicians should remember that with their rights
they have their duties, and their duty is to determine among the works
of artists not belonging to their body those which are most likely to
advance public knowledge and judgment, and to give these the best places
next their own; neither would it detract from their dignity if they
occasionally ceded a square even of their own territory, as they did
gracefully and rightly, and, I am sorry to add, disinterestedly, to the
picture of Paul de la Roche in 1844. Now the Academicians know perfectly
well that the mass of portrait which encumbers their walls at half
height is worse than useless, seriously harmful to the public taste, and
it was highly criminal (I use the word advisedly) that the valuable and
interesting work of Fielding, of which I have above spoken, should have
been placed where it was, above three rows of eye-glasses and
waistcoats. A very beautiful work of Harding's was treated either in the
same or the following exhibition with still greater injustice.
Fielding's was merely put out of sight; Harding's where its faults were
conspicuous and its virtues lost. It was an Alpine scene, of which the
foreground, rocks, and torrents were painted with unrivalled fidelity
and precision; the foliage was dexterous, the aerial gradations of the
mountains tender and multitudinous, their forms carefully studied and
very grand. The blemish of the picture was a buff-colored tower with a
red roof; singularly meagre in detail, and conventionally relieved from
a mass of gloom. The picture was placed where nothing but this tower
could be seen.
I have not given any examples in this place, because it is
difficult to explain such circumstances of effect without diagrams: I
purpose entering into fuller discussion of the subject with the aid of
illustration.
The inscription is to the following effect,—a pleasant thing to
see upon the walls, were it but more innocently placed:—
CAMPO. DI. S. MAURIZIO
DIO
CONSERVI A NOI.
LUNGAMENTE
LO ZELANTIS. E. REVERENDIS
D. LUIGI. PICCINI.
NOSTRO
NOVELLO PIEVANO.
GLI ESULTANT.
PARROCCHIANI
The quantity of gold with which the decorations of Venice were once
covered could not now be traced or credited without reference to the authority
of Gentile Bellini. The greater part of the marble mouldings have been
touched with it in lines and points, the minarets of St. Mark's, and all the
florid carving of the arches entirely sheeted. The Casa d'Oro retained it on
its lions until the recent commencement of its Restoration.
Indeed there should be no such difference at all. Every architect ought
to be an artist; every very great artist is necessarily an architect.
This passage seems at variance with what has been said of the necessity
of painting present times and objects. It is not so. A great painter
makes out of that which he finds before him something which is independent
of all time. He can only do this out of the materials ready to his
hand, but that which he builds has the dignity of dateless age. A little
painter is annihilated by an anachronism, and is conventionally antique,
and involuntarily modern.
One point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no
question of art but of material. The reader will have observed that I
strictly limited the perfection of Turner's works to the time of their first appearing
on the walls of the Royal Academy. It bitterly grieves me to have
to do this, but the fact is indeed so. No picture of Turner's is seen in perfection
a month after it is painted. The Walhalla cracked before it had
been eight days in the Academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lose lustre
long before the exhibition is over; and when all the colors begin to get
hard a year or two after the picture is painted, a painful deadness and
opacity comes over them, the whites especially becoming lifeless, and many
of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint
remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always the case. I believe
that in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colors being so peculiarly
blended and mingled in Turner's present manner as almost to necessitate
their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in
which they sometimes take place, is proved by the comparative safety of
some even of the more brilliant works. Thus the Old Temeraire is nearly
safe in color, and quite firm; while the Juliet and her Nurse is now the
ghost of what it was; the Slaver shows no cracks, though it is chilled in
some of the darker passages, while the Walhalla and several of the recent
Venices cracked in the Royal Academy. It is true that the damage makes
no further progress after the first year or two, and that even in its altered
state the picture is always valuable and records its intention; but it is bitterly
to be regretted that so great a painter should not leave a single work
by which in succeeding ages he might be estimated. The fact of his using
means so imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of the pictures in
his own gallery, are a phenomenon in human mind which appears to me
utterly inexplicable; and both are without excuse. If the effects he desires
cannot be to their full extent produced except by these treacherous means,
one picture only should be painted each year as an exhibition of immediate
power, and the rest should be carried out, whatever the expense of labor
and time in safe materials, even at the risk of some deterioration of immediate
effect. That which is greatest in him is entirely independent of
means; much of what he now accomplishes illegitimately might without
doubt be attained in securer modes—what cannot should without hesitation
be abandoned. Fortunately the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration.
Many of them are now almost destroyed, but this has been I
think always through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very
early works. I have myself known no instance of a drawing properly protected,
and not rashly exposed to light suffering the slightest change. The
great foes of Turner, as of all other great colorists especially, are the picture
cleaner and the mounter.
OF TRUTH OF TONE.
As I have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the old masters have
never yet been equalled; and as this is the first, and nearly the last,
concession I shall have to make to them, I § 1. Meaning of the word
"tone:" First, the right relation of objects in shadow to the principal
light.wish it at once to be thoroughly understood how far it extends.
I understand two things by the word "tone:"—first, the exact relief and
relation of objects against and to each other in substance and darkness,
as they are nearer or more distant, and the perfect relation of the
shades of all of them to the chief light of the picture, whether that be
sky, water, or anything else. Secondly, the exact § 2. Secondly, the
quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of its brightness to
the hue of light upon it.relation of the colors to the shadows to the
colors of the lights, so that they may be at once felt to be merely
different degrees of the same light; and the accurate relation among the
illuminated parts themselves, with respect to the degree in which they
are influenced by the color of the light itself, whether warm or cold;
so that the whole of the picture (or, where several tones are united,
those parts of it which are under each,) may be felt to be in one
climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere; this
being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and inexplicable quality of
each color laid on, which makes the eye feel both what is the actual
color of the object represented, and that it is raised to its apparent
pitch by illumination. A very bright brown, for instance, out of
sunshine, may be precisely of the same shade of color as a very dead or
cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally different in
quality; and that quality by which the illuminated dead color would be
felt in nature different from the unilluminated bright one, is what
artists are perpetually aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense
about, under the name of "tone." The want of tone in pictures is caused
by objects looking bright in their own positive hue, and not by
illumination, and by the consequent want of sensation of the raising of
their hues by light.
The first of these meanings of the word "tone" is liable to be
confounded with what is commonly called "aerial perspective." But aerial
perspective is the expression of space, by any § 3. Difference between
tone in its first sense and aerial perspective.means whatsoever,
sharpness of edge, vividness of color, etc., assisted by greater pitch
of shadow, and requires only that objects should be detached from each
other, by degrees of intensity in proportion to their distance,
without requiring that the difference between the farthest and nearest
should be in positive quantity the same that nature has put. But what I
have called "tone" requires that there should be the same sum of
difference, as well as the same division of differences.
Now the finely toned pictures of the old masters are, in this respect,
some of the notes of nature played two or three octaves below her key;
the dark objects in the middle distance having § 4. The pictures of the
old masters perfect in relation of middle tints to light.precisely the
same relation to the light of the sky which they have in nature, but the
light being necessarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the shadow
deepened in the same degree. I have often been struck, when looking at a
camera-obscuro on a dark day, with the exact resemblance the image bore
to one of the finest pictures of the old masters; all the foliage coming
dark against the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass but here and
there the isolated light of a silvery stem or an unusually illumined
cluster of leafage.
Now if this could be done consistently, and all the notes of § 5. And
consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to
darkness.nature given in this way an octave or two down, it would be
right and necessary so to do: but be it observed, not only does nature
surpass us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses
white paper, but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade. Her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light
whatever is reflected to the eye; ours are black surfaces from which,
paint as black as we may, a great deal of light is still reflected, and
which, placed against one of nature's deep bits of gloom, would tell as
distinct light. Here we are then, with white paper for our highest
light, and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set to run
the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her light, and vacuity for
her gloom. It is evident that she can well afford to throw her
material objects dark against the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and
yet give in those objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances
and tones before she comes to black, or to anything like it—all the
illumined surfaces of her objects being as distinctly and vividly
brighter than her nearest and darkest shadows, as the sky is brighter
than those illumined surfaces. But if we, against our poor, dull
obscurity of yellow paint, instead of sky, insist on having the same
relation of shade in material objects, we go down to the bottom of our
scale at once; and what in the world are we to do then? Where are all
our intermediate distances to come from?—how are we to express the
aerial relations among the parts themselves, for instance, of foliage,
whose most distant boughs are already almost black?—how are we to come
up from this to the foreground, and when we have done so, how are we to
express the distinction between its solid parts, already as dark as we
can make them, and its vacant hollows, which nature has marked sharp and
clear and black, among its lighted surfaces? It cannot but be evident at
a glance, that if to any one of the steps from one distance to another,
we give the same quantity of difference in pitch of shade which nature
does, we must pay for this expenditure of our means by totally missing
half a dozen distances, not a whit less important or marked, and so
sacrifice a multitude of truths, to obtain one. And this, accordingly
was the means by which the old masters obtained their (truth?) of tone.
They chose those steps of distance which are the most conspicuous and
noticeable—that for instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to
hills—and they gave these their precise pitch of difference in shade
with exquisite accuracy of imitation. Their means were then exhausted,
and they were obliged to leave their trees flat masses of
mere filled-up outline, and to omit the truths of space in every
individual part of their picture by the thousand. But this they did not
care for; it saved them trouble; they reached their grand end, imitative
effect; they thrust home just at the places where the common and
careless eye looks for imitation, and they attained the broadest and
most faithful appearance of truth of tone which art can exhibit.
But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art; they lavish their
whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves powerless when they
should seize a thousand. And is it indeed §6. General falsehood of such
a system.worthy of being called a truth, when we have a vast history
given us to relate, to the fulness of which neither our limits nor our
language are adequate, instead of giving all its parts abridged in the
order of their importance, to omit or deny the greater part of them,
that we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or three? Nay, the very
truth to which the rest are sacrificed is rendered falsehood by their
absence, the relation of the tree to the sky is marked as an
impossibility by the want of relation of its parts to each other.
Turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle. He
boldly takes pure white (and justly, for it is the sign of the most
intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and § 7. The principle of
Turner in this respect.lampblack for his deepest shade; and between
these he makes every degree of shade indicative of separate degree of
distance,[16] giving each step of approach, not the exact difference in
pitch which it would have in nature, but a difference bearing the same
proportion to that which his sum of possible shade bears to the sum of
nature's shade; so that an object half way between his horizon and his
foreground, will be exactly in half tint of force, and every minute
division of intermediate space will have just its proportionate share of
the lesser sum, and no more. Hence where the old masters expressed one
distance, he expresses a hundred; and where they said furlongs, he says
leagues. Which of these modes of procedure be most agreeable with truth,
I think I may safely leave the reader to decide for himself.
He will see in this very first instance, one proof of what we above
asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is inconsistent with
real truth; for the very means by which the old masters attained the
apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled
them to give up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to
represent a few successive and marked stages of distance, like the
scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible, multitudinous,
symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more careful to separate
her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to separate the nearest
bough of that bush from the one next to it.
Take for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has
produced—the work of a really great and intellectual mind, the quiet
Nicholas Poussin, in our own National Gallery, § 8. Comparison of N.
Poussin's "Phocion,"with the traveller washing his feet. The first idea
we receive from this picture is, that it is evening, and all the light
coming from the horizon. Not so. It is full moon, the light coming steep
from the left, as is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand
pedestal,—(for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not
lose itself half way down, and if it were not lateral, the shadow would
slope, instead of being vertical.) Now, ask yourself, and answer
candidly, if those black masses of foliage, in which scarcely any form
is seen but the outline, be a true representation of trees under
noonday sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it
necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, and marking every
leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling light. The only truth in
the picture is the exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees
and hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the intricacy of
the foliage, and everything indicative either of the nature of the
light, or the character of the objects, are unhesitatingly sacrificed.
So much falsehood does it cost to obtain two apparent truths of tone. Or
take, as a still more glaring instance, No. 260 in the Dulwich Gallery,
where the trunks of the trees, even of those farthest off, on the left,
are as black as paint can make them, and there is not, and cannot be,
the slightest increase of force, or any marking whatsoever
of distance by color, or any other means, between them and the
foreground.
Compare with these, Turner's treatment of his materials in the Mercury
and Argus. He has here his light actually coming from the distance, the
sun being nearly in the centre of the § 9. With Turner's "Mercury and
Argus."picture, and a violent relief of objects against it would be far
more justifiable than in Poussin's case. But this dark relief is used in
its full force only with the nearest leaves of the nearest group of
foliage overhanging the foreground from the left; and between these
and the more distant members of the same group, though only three or
four yards separate, distinct aerial perspective and intervening mist
and light are shown; while the large tree in the centre, though very
dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is much
diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of leaves, and
is faint compared with all the foreground. It is true that this tree has
not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it
would have in nature; but it has precisely as much as it possibly can
have, to leave it the same proportionate relation to the objects near at
hand. And it cannot but be evident to the thoughtful reader, that
whatever trickery or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of
treatment, this is the only scientific or essentially truthful system,
and that what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective.
Compare again the last vignette in Rogers's Poems, the "Datur Hora
Quieti," where everything, even the darkest parts of the trees, is kept
pale and full of graduation; even the bridge § 10. And with the "Datur
Hora Quieti."where it crosses the descending stream of sunshine, rather
lost in the light than relieved against it, until we come up to the
foreground, and then the vigorous local black of the plough throws the
whole picture into distance and sunshine. I do not know anything in art
which can for a moment be set beside this drawing for united intensity
of light and repose.
Observe, I am not at present speaking of the beauty or desirableness of
the system of the old masters; it may be sublime, and affecting, and
ideal, and intellectual, and a great deal more; but all I am concerned
with at present is, that it is not true; while Turner's is
the closest and most studied approach to truth of which the materials of
art admit.
It was not, therefore, with reference to this division of the subject
that I admitted inferiority in our great modern master to Claude or
Poussin, but with reference to the second and more § 11. The second
sense of the word "tone."usual meaning of the word "tone"—the exact
relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects
under them; and more especially that precious quality of each color laid
on, which makes it appear a quiet color illuminated, not a bright color
in shade. But I allow this inferiority only with respect to the paintings of Turner, not to his drawings. I could select from
among the § 12. Remarkable difference in this respect between the
paintings and drawings of Turner.works named in Chap. VI. of this
section, pieces of tone absolutely faultless and perfect, from the
coolest grays of wintry dawn to the intense fire of summer noon. And the
difference between the prevailing character of these and that of nearly
all the paintings, (for the early oil pictures of Turner are far less
perfect in tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to account for,
but on the supposition that there is something in the material which
modern artists in general are incapable of mastering, and which compels
Turner himself to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and
more important qualities. The total failures of Callcott, whose
struggles after tone ended so invariably in shivering winter or brown
paint, the misfortune of Landseer with his evening sky in 1842, the
frigidity of Stanfield, and the earthiness and opacity which all the
magnificent power and admirable science of Etty are unable entirely to
conquer, are too fatal and convincing proofs of the want of knowledge of
means, rather than of the absence of aim, in modern artists as a body.
Yet, § 13. Not owing to want of power over the material.with respect to
Turner, however much the want of tone in his early paintings (the Fall
of Carthage, for instance, and others painted at a time when he was
producing the most exquisite hues of light in water-color) might seem to
favor such a supposition, there are passages in his recent works (such,
for instance, as the sunlight along the sea, in the Slaver) which
directly contradict it, and which prove to us that where he now errs in
tone, (as in the Cicero's Villa,) it is less owing to want of power to
reach it, than to the pursuit of some different and nobler
end. I shall therefore glance at the particular modes in which Turner
manages his tone in his present Academy pictures; the early ones must be
given up at once. Place a genuine untouched Claude beside the Crossing
the Brook, and the difference in value and tenderness of tone will be
felt in an instant, and felt the more painfully because all the cool and
transparent qualities of Claude would have been here desirable, and in
their place, and appear to have been aimed at. The foreground of the
Building of Carthage, and the greater part of the architecture of the
Fall, are equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them with
genuine passages of Claude's sunshine. There is a very grand and simple
piece of tone in the possession of J. Allnutt, Esq., a sunset behind
willows, but even this is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude
in its extreme distance. Not so with the recent Academy pictures; many
of their passages are absolutely faultless; all are refined and
marvellous, and with the exception of the Cicero's Villa, we shall find
few pictures painted within the last ten years which do not either
present us with perfect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is
necessarily sacrificed. If we glance at the requirements of nature, and
her superiority of means to ours, we shall see why and how it is
sacrificed.
Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either to be
considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colors with
fidelity; or colored, and consequently modifying § 14. The two distinct
qualities of light to be considered.these local tints, with its own. But
the power of pure white light to exhibit local color is strangely
variable. The morning light of about nine or ten is usually very pure;
but the difference of its effect on different days, independently of
mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable as inexplicable. Every one knows
how capriciously the colors of a fine opal vary from day to day, and how
rare the lights are which bring them fully out. Now the expression of
the strange, penetrating, deep, neutral light, which, while it alters
no color, brings every color up to the highest possible pitch and key of
pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute of finely-toned
pictures by the great colorists as opposed to pictures of equally high
tone, by masters who, careless of color, are content, like Cuyp, to lose
local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light.
Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter far
more of feeling than of proof, for any color is possible under such
lights; it is meagreness and feebleness only which § 15. Falsehoods by
which Titian attains the appearance of quality in light.are to be
avoided; and these are rather matters of sensation than of reasoning.
But it is yet easy enough to prove by what exaggerated and false means
the pictures most celebrated for this quality are endowed with their
richness and solemnity of color. In the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian,
it is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than
the blue of the distant landscape;—impossible, not from its vividness,
but because it is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity
of color; it is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed
so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of
form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains (intended to be ten
miles off) from the robe of Ariadne close to the spectator. Yet make
this blue faint, aerial, and distant—make it in the slightest degree to
resemble the truth of nature's color—and all the tone of the picture,
all its intensity and splendor, will vanish on the instant. So again, in
the exquisite and inimitable little bit of color, the Europa in the
Dulwich Gallery; the blue of the dark promontory on the left is
thoroughly absurd and impossible, and the warm tones of the clouds
equally so, unless it were sunset; but the blue especially, because it
is nearer than several points of land which are equally in shadow, and
yet are rendered in warm gray. But the whole value and tone of the
picture would be destroyed if this blue were altered.
Now, as much of this kind of richness of tone is always given by Turner
as is compatible with truth of aerial effect; but he will not sacrifice
the higher truths of his landscape to mere § 16. Turner will not use
such means.pitch of color as Titian does. He infinitely prefers having
the power of giving extension of space, and fulness of form, to that of
giving deep melodies of tone; he feels too much the incapacity of art,
with its feeble means of light, to give the abundance of nature's
gradations; and therefore it is, that taking pure white for his highest
expression of light, that even pure yellow may give him one more step in
the scale of shade, he becomes necessarily inferior in richness of
effect to the old masters of tone, (who always used a golden highest
light,) but gains by the sacrifice a thousand more essential
truths. § 17. But gains in essential truth by the sacrifice.For, though
we all know how much more like light, in the abstract, a finely-toned
warm hue will be to the feelings than white, yet it is utterly
impossible to mark the same number of gradations between such a sobered
high light and the deepest shadow, which we can between this and white;
and as these gradations are absolutely necessary to give the facts of
form and distance, which, as we have above shown, are more important
than any truths of tone,[17] Turner sacrifices the richness of his
picture to its completeness—the manner of the statement to its matter.
And not only is he right in doing this for the sake of space, but he is
right also in the abstract question of color; for as we observed above
(Sect. 14,) it is only the white light—the perfect unmodified group of
rays—which will bring out local color perfectly; and if the picture,
therefore, is to be complete in its system of color, that is, if it is
to have each of the three primitives in their purity, it must have
white for its highest light, otherwise the purity of one of them at
least will be impossible. And this leads § 18. The second quality of
light.us to notice the second and more frequent quality of light, (which
is assumed if we make our highest representation of it yellow,) the
positive hue, namely, which it may itself possess, of course modifying
whatever local tints it exhibits, and thereby rendering certain colors
necessary, and certain colors impossible. Under the direct yellow light
of a descending sun, for instance, pure white and pure blue are both
impossible; because the purest whites and blues that nature could
produce would be turned in some degree into gold or green by it; and
when the sun is within half a degree of the horizon, if the sky be
clear, a rose light supersedes the golden one, still more overwhelming
in its effect on local color. I have seen the pale fresh green of spring
vegetation in the gardens of Venice, on the Lido side, turned pure
russet, or between that and crimson, by a vivid sunset of this kind,
every particle of green color being absolutely annihilated. And so under
all colored lights, (and there are few, from dawn to twilight, which are
not slightly tinted by some accident of atmosphere,) there
is a change of local color, which, when in a picture it is so exactly
proportioned that we feel at once both what the local colors are in
themselves, and what is the color and strength of the light upon them,
gives us truth of tone.
For expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might be chosen out
of the good pictures of Cuyp, which have never been equalled in art. But
I much doubt if there be a single bright § 19. The perfection of Cuyp
in this respect interfered with by numerous solecisms.Cuyp in the world,
which, taken as a whole, does not present many glaring solecisms in
tone. I have not seen many fine pictures of his, which were not utterly
spoiled by the vermilion dress of some principal figure, a vermilion
totally unaffected and unwarmed by the golden hue of the rest of the
picture; and, what is worse, with little distinction, between its own
illumined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether out of
sunshine, the color of a bright vermilion in dead, cold daylight. It is
possible that the original color may have gone down in all cases, or
that these parts may have been villanously repainted: but I am the
rather disposed to believe them genuine, because even throughout the
best of his pictures there are evident recurrences of the same kind of
solecism in other colors—greens for instance—as in the steep bank on
the right of the largest picture in the Dulwich Gallery; and browns, as
in the lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible and
painful contrast with the one standing beside it, the flank of the
standing one being bathed in breathing sunshine, and the reposing one
laid in with as dead, opaque, and lifeless brown as ever came raw from a
novice's pallet. And again, in that marked 83, while the figures on the
right are walking in the most precious light, and those just beyond them
in the distance leave a furlong or two of pure visible sunbeams between
us and them, the cows in the centre are entirely deprived, poor things,
of both light and air. And these failing parts, though they often escape
the eye when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what is
beautiful in it, yet so injure its whole effect that I question if there
be many Cuyps in which vivid colors occur, which will not lose their
effect, and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or twelve paces,
retaining their influence only when the eye is close enough
to rest on the right parts without including the whole. Take, for
instance, the large one in our National Gallery, seen from the opposite
door, where the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and
the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia drawing rather than
like sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter want of aerial grays indicated
through them.
Now, there is no instance in the works of Turner of anything so faithful
and imitative of sunshine as the best parts of Cuyp; but at the same
time, there is not a single vestige of the same kind of solecism. It is
true, that in his fondness for color, § 20. Turner is not so perfect in
parts—far more so in the whole.Turner is in the habit of allowing
excessively cold fragments in big warmest pictures; but these are never,
observe, warm colors with no light upon them, useless as contrasts while
they are discords in the tone; but they are bits of the very coolest
tints, partially removed from the general influence, and exquisitely
valuable as color, though, with all deference be it spoken, I think them
sometimes slightly destructive of what would otherwise be perfect tone.
For instance, the two blue and white stripes on the drifting flag of the
Slave Ship, are, I think, the least degree too purely cool. I think both
the blue and white would be impossible under such a light; and in the
same way the white parts of the dress of the Napoleon interfered by
their coolness with the perfectly managed warmth of all the rest of the
picture. But both these lights are reflexes, and it is nearly impossible
to say what tones may be assumed even by the warmest light reflected
from a cool surface; so that we cannot actually convict these parts of
falsehood, and though we should have liked the tone of the picture
better had they been slightly warmer, we cannot but like the color of
the picture better with them as they are; while Cuyp's failing portions
are not only evidently and demonstrably false, being in direct light,
but are as disagreeable in color as false in tone, and injurious to
everything near them. And the best proof of the grammatical accuracy of
the tones of Turner is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all
his pictures at any distance. We approach only to follow the sunshine
into every cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused
over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star
at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it;
while many even of the best pictures of Claude must be looked close into
to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. The smallest of
the three seaports in the National Gallery is valuable and right in tone
when we are close to it; but ten yards off, it is all brick-dust,
offensively and evidently false in its whole hue.
The comparison of Turner with Cuyp and Claude may sound strange in most
ears; but this is chiefly because we are not in the habit of analyzing
and dwelling upon those difficult and § 21. The power in Turner of
uniting a number of tones.daring passages of the modern master which do
not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth, owing to his habit
of uniting two, three, or even more separate tones in the same
composition. In this also he strictly follows nature, for wherever
climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with every 200
feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in tone
from the lower ones, these from the rest of the landscape, and in all
probability, some part of the horizon from the rest. And when nature
allows this in a high degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always
will, she does not herself impress at once with intensity of tone, as in
the deep and quiet yellows of a July evening, but rather with the
magnificence and variety of associated color, in which, if we give time
and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity and the depth
of twenty tones instead of one. Now in Turner's power of associating
cold with warm light, no one has ever approached, or even ventured into
the same field with him. The old masters, content with one simple tone,
sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches
of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other.
They gave the warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its
gold; but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon where,
seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night gather
themselves for their victory. Whether it was in them impotence or
judgment, it is not for me to decide. I have only to point to the daring
of Turner in this respect, as something to which art affords no matter
of comparison, as that in which the mere attempt is, in
itself, superiority. Take the evening effect with the Temeraire. That
picture will not, at the first glance, deceive as a piece of actual
sunlight; but this is because there is in it more than sunlight, because
under the blazing veil of vaulted fire which lights the vessel on her
last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness, out of
which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the
disturbed sea; because the cold, deadly shadows of the twilight are
gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look, you
will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the
vastness of the departing form.
And if, in effects of this kind, time be taken to dwell upon the
individual tones, and to study the laws of their reconcilement, there
will be found in the recent Academy pictures of this §22.
Recapitulation.great artist a mass of various truth to which nothing can
be brought for comparison, which stands not only unrivalled, but
uncontended with, and which, when in carrying out it may be inferior to
some of the picked passages of the old masters, is so through deliberate
choice rather to suggest a multitude of truths than to imitate one, and
through a strife with difficulties of effect of which art can afford no
parallel example. Nay, in the next chapter, respecting color, we shall
see farther reason for doubting the truth of Claude, Cuyp, and Poussin,
in tone,—reason so palpable that if these were all that were to be
contended with, I should scarcely have allowed any inferiority in Turner
whatsoever;[18] but I allow it, not so much with reference to the
deceptive imitations of sunlight, wrought out with desperate
exaggerations of shade, of the professed landscape painters, as with
reference to the glory of Rubens, the glow of Titian, the silver
tenderness of Cagliari, and perhaps more than all to the
precious and pure passages of intense feeling and heavenly light, holy
and undefiled, and glorious with the changeless passion of eternity,
which sanctify with their shadeless peace the deep and noble conceptions
of the early school of Italy,—of Fra Bartolomeo, Perugino, and the
early mind of Raffaelle.
Of course I am not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but
of that quantity of depth of shade by which, c[oe]teris paribus, a
near object will exceed a distant one. For the truth of the systems of
Turner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide Chapter III. of
this Section, § 8.
More important, observe, as matters of truth or fact. It may
often chance that, as a matter of feeling, the tone is the more
important of the two; but with this we have here no concern.
We must not leave the subject of tone without alluding to the works
of the late George Barrett, which afford glorious and exalted passages
of light; and John Varley, who, though less truthful in his aim, was
frequently deep in his feeling. Some of the sketches of De Wint are also
admirable in this respect. As for our oil pictures, the less that is
said about them the better. Callcott has the truest aim; but not having
any eye for color, it is impossible for him to succeed in tone.
OF TRUTH OF COLOR.
There is, in the first room of the National Gallery, a landscape
attributed to Gaspar Poussin, called sometimes Aricia, sometimes Le or
La Riccia, according to the fancy of catalogue §1. Observations on the
color of G. Poussin's La Riccia.printers. Whether it can be supposed to
resemble the ancient Aricia, now La Riccia, close to Albano, I will not
take upon me to determine, seeing that most of the towns of these old
masters are quite as like one place as another; but, at any rate, it is
a town on a hill, wooded with two-and-thirty bushes, of very uniform
size, and possessing about the same number of leaves each. These bushes
are all painted in with one dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly
greenish towards the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock,
which of course would in nature have been cool and gray beside the
lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover
completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted of a
very clear, pretty, and positive brick-red, the only thing like color in
the picture. The foreground is a piece of road, which in order to make
allowance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in light,
and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vegetation usually present
on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green gray, and the truth of
the picture is completed by a number of dots in the sky on the right,
with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar brown.
§2. As compared with the actual scene.
Not long ago, I was slowly
descending this very bit of carriage-road, the first turn after you
leave Albano, not a little impeded by the worthy successors of the
ancient prototypes of Veiento.[19] It had been wild weather
when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna the clouds were sweeping
in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams
of sun along the Claudian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its
arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the
Alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline
of the domes of Albano and graceful darkness of its ilex grove rose
against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky
gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep,
palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. The noonday sun came
slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled
and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure
of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot
call it color, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet,
like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the
valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant
and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the
sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of
the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of
some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks
for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around
them, breaking over the gray walls of rock into a thousand separate
stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let
them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven,
opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as
sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of
dark rock—dark though flushed with scarlet lichen,—casting their quiet
shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them
filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over
all—the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that
have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless
intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines,
passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the
measureless line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.
Tell me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner? Not in his most daring
and dazzling efforts could Turner himself come near it; but
you could not at the time have thought or remembered the work of any
other man as having the remotest hue or §3. Turner himself is inferior
in brilliancy to nature.resemblance of what you saw. Nor am I speaking
of what is uncommon or unnatural; there is no climate, no place, and
scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal
effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial pigments are,
even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside
her living color; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh
flower, no art nor expedient can reach; but in addition to this, nature
exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their
brilliancy, while the painter, deprived of this splendid aid, works
still with what is actually a gray shadow compared to the force of
nature's color. Take a blade of grass and a scarlet flower, and place
them so as to receive sunlight beside the brightest canvas that ever
left Turner's easel, and the picture will be extinguished. So far from
out-facing nature, he does not, as far as mere vividness of color goes,
one-half reach her;—but does he use this brilliancy of color on objects
to which it does not properly belong? Let us compare his works in this
respect with a few instances from the old masters.
There is, on the left hand side of Salvator's Mercury and the Woodman in
our National Gallery, something, without doubt intended for a rocky
mountain, in the middle distance, §4. Impossible colors of Salvator,
Titian;near enough for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly
visible, or, rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush
over it to be visible, which, though not particularly representative
either of one thing or another, are without doubt intended to be
symbolical of rocks. Now no mountain in full light, and near enough for
its details of crag to be seen, is without great variety of delicate
color. Salvator has painted it throughout without one instant of
variation; but this, I suppose, is simplicity and generalization;—let
it pass: but what is the color? Pure sky blue, without one grain of
gray, or any modifying hue whatsoever;—the same brush which had just
given the bluest parts of the sky, has been more loaded at the same part
of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in with unmitigated
ultramarine. Now mountains only can become pure blue when
there is so much air between us and them that they become mere flat,
dark shades, every detail being totally lost: they become blue when they
become air, and not till then. Consequently this part of Salvator's
painting, being of hills perfectly clear and near, with all their
details visible, is, as far as color is concerned, broad, bold
falsehood—the direct assertion of direct impossibility.
In the whole range of Turner's works, recent or of old date, you will
not find an instance of anything near enough to have details visible,
painted in sky blue. Wherever Turner gives blue, there he gives
atmosphere; it is air, not object. Blue he gives to his sea; so does
nature;—blue he gives, sapphire-deep, to his extreme distance; so does
nature;—blue he gives to the misty shadows and hollows of his hills; so
does nature: but blue he gives not, where detail and illumined surface
are visible; as he comes into light and character, so he breaks into
warmth and varied hue; nor is there in one of his works, and I speak of
the Academy pictures especially, one touch of cold color which is not to
be accounted for, and proved right and full of meaning.
I do not say that Salvator's distance is not artist-like; both in that,
and in the yet more glaringly false distances of Titian above alluded
to, and in hundreds of others of equal boldness of exaggeration, I can
take delight, and perhaps should be sorry to see them other than they
are; but it is somewhat singular to hear people talking of Turner's
exquisite care and watchfulness in color as false, while they receive
such cases of preposterous and audacious fiction with the most generous
and simple credulity.
Again, in the upper sky of the picture of Nicolas Poussin, before
noticed, the clouds are of a very fine clear olive-green, about the same
tint as the brightest parts of the trees beneath §5. Poussin, and
Claude.them. They cannot have altered, (or else the trees must have been
painted in gray,) for the hue is harmonious and well united with the
rest of the picture, and the blue and white in the centre of the sky are
still fresh and pure. Now a green sky in open and illumined distance is
very frequent, and very beautiful; but rich olive-green clouds, as far
as I am acquainted with nature, are a piece of color in which she is not apt to indulge. You will be puzzled to show me such a
thing in the recent works of Turner.[20] Again, take any important group
of trees, I do not care whose—Claude's, Salvator's, or Poussin's—with
lateral light (that in the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, or Gaspar's
sacrifice of Isaac, for instance:) Can it be seriously supposed that
those murky browns and melancholy greens are representative of the tints
of leaves under full noonday sun? I know that you cannot help looking
upon all these pictures as pieces of dark relief against a light wholly
proceeding from the distances; but they are nothing of the kind—they
are noon and morning effects with full lateral light. Be so kind as to
match the color of a leaf in the sun (the darkest you like) as nearly as
you can, and bring your matched color and set it beside one of these
groups of trees, and take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any
part of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk about the
truth of color of the old masters!
And let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidelity of
impression be brought forward here. I have nothing whatever to do with
this at present. I am not talking about what is sublime, but about what
is true. People attack Turner on this ground;—they never speak of
beauty or sublimity with respect to him, but of nature and truth, and
let them support their own favorite masters on the same grounds. Perhaps
I may have the very deepest veneration for the feeling of the old
masters, but I must not let it influence me now—my business is to match
colors, not to talk sentiment. Neither let it be said that I am going
too much into details, and that general truths may be obtained by local
falsehood. Truth is only to be measured by close comparison
of actual facts; we may talk forever about it in generals, and prove
nothing. We cannot tell what effect falsehood may produce on this or
that person, but we can very well tell what is false and what is not,
and if it produce on our senses the effect of truth, that only
demonstrates their imperfection and inaccuracy, and need of cultivation.
Turner's color is glaring to one person's sensations, and beautiful to
another's. This proves nothing. Poussin's color is right to one, soot to
another. This proves nothing. There is no means of arriving at any
conclusion but close comparison of both with the known and demonstrable
hues of nature, and this comparison will invariably turn Claude or
Poussin into blackness, and even Turner into gray.
Whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the objects of a real
landscape, yet a window with that landscape seen through it, will
invariably appear a broad space of light as compared with the shade of
the room walls; and this single circumstance may prove to us both the
intensity and the diffusion of daylight in open air, and the necessity,
if a picture is to be truthful in effect of color, that it should tell
as a broad space of graduated illumination—not, as do those of the old
masters, as a patch-work of black shades. Their works are nature in
mourning weeds,—ὀυδ᾽
ἑν
ἡλίω
καθαρῷ
τεθραμμένοι,
ἀλλ᾽
ὑπὸ
συμμιγει
σκιᾆ.
It is true that there are, here and there, in the Academy pictures,
passages in which Turner has translated the unattainable intensity of
one tone of color, into the attainable pitch of a higher §6. Turner's
translation of colors.one: the golden green for instance, of intense
sunshine on verdure, into pure yellow, because he knows it to be
impossible, with any mixture of blue whatsoever, to give faithfully its
relative intensity of light, and Turner always will have his light and
shade right, whatever it costs him in color. But he does this in rare
cases, and even then over very small spaces; and I should be obliged to
his critics if they would go out to some warm, mossy green bank in full
summer sunshine, and try to reach its tone; and when they find, as find
they will, Indian yellow and chrome look dark beside it, let them tell
me candidly which is nearest truth, the gold of Turner, or the mourning
and murky olive browns and verdigris greens in which Claude,
with the industry and intelligence of a Sevres china painter, drags the
laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.
But it is singular enough that the chief attacks on Turner for
overcharged brilliancy, are made, not when there could by any
possibility be any chance of his outstepping nature, but § 7. Notice of
effects in which no brilliancy of art can even approach that of
reality.when he has taken subjects which no colors of earth could ever
vie with or reach, such, for instance, as his sunsets among the high
clouds. When I come to speak of skies, I shall point out what divisions,
proportioned to their elevation, exist in the character of clouds. It is
the highest region,—that exclusively characterized by white, filmy,
multitudinous, and quiet clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks, or
flakes, of which I speak at present, a region which no landscape
painters have ever made one effort to represent, except Rubens and
Turner—the latter taking it for his most favorite and frequent study.
Now we have been speaking hitherto of what is constant and necessary in
nature, of the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colors, and we
repeat again, that no gorgeousness of the pallet can reach even these.
But it is a widely different thing when nature herself takes a coloring
fit, and does something extraordinary, something really to exhibit her
power. She has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but
incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are
in these sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment
before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when
this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of
inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in
common daylight be pure snow white, and which give therefore fair field
to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no
check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the
zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and
fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into
unsullied, shadowless, crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for
which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind,—things
which can only be conceived while they are visible,—the intense hollow
blue of the upper sky melting through it all,—showing here
deep, and pure, and lightless, there, modulated by the filmy, formless
body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its
crimson and gold. Now there is no connection, no one link of association
or resemblance, between those skies and the work of any mortal hand but
Turner's. He alone has followed nature in these her highest efforts; he
follows her faithfully, but far behind; follows at such a distance below
her intensity that the Napoleon of last year's exhibition, and the
Temeraire of the year before, would look colorless and cold if the eye
came upon them after one of nature's sunsets among the high clouds. But
there are a thousand § 8. Reasons for the usual incredulity of the
observer with respect to their representation.reasons why this should
not be believed. The concurrence of circumstances necessary to produce
the sunsets of which I speak does not take place above five or six times
in the summer, and then only for a space of from five to ten minutes,
just as the sun reaches the horizon. Considering how seldom people think
of looking for sunset at all, and how seldom, if they do, they are in a
position from which it can be fully seen, the chances that their
attention should be awake, and their position favorable, during these
few flying instants of the year, is almost as nothing. What can the
citizen, who can see only the red light on the canvas of the wagon at
the end of the street, and the crimson color of the bricks of his
neighbor's chimney, know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky from
the horizon to the zenith? What can even the quiet inhabitant of the
English lowlands, whose scene for the manifestation of the fire of
heaven is limited to the tops of hayricks, and the rooks' nests in the
old elm-trees, know of the mighty passages of splendor which are tossed
from Alp to Alp over the azure of a thousand miles of champaign? Even
granting the constant vigor of observation, and supposing the possession
of such impossible knowledge, it needs but a moment's reflection to
prove how incapable the memory is of retaining for any time the distinct
image of the sources even of its most vivid impressions. What
recollection have we of the sunsets which delighted us last year? We may
know that they were magnificent, or glowing, but no distinct image of
color or form is retained—nothing of whose degree (for the great
difficulty with the memory is to retain, not facts, but
degrees of fact) we could be so certain as to say of anything now
presented to us, that it is like it. If we did say so, we should be
wrong; for we may be quite certain that the energy of an impression
fades from the memory, and becomes more and more indistinct every day;
and thus we compare a faded and indistinct image with the decision and
certainty of one present to the senses. How constantly do we affirm that
the thunder-storm of last week was the most terrible one we ever saw in
our lives, because we compare it, not with the thunder-storm of last
year, but with the faded and feeble recollection of it. And so, when we
enter an exhibition, as we have no definite standard of truth before us,
our feelings are toned down and subdued to the quietness of color which
is all that human power can ordinarily attain to; and when we turn to a
piece of higher and closer truth, approaching the pitch of the color of
nature, but to which we are not guided, as we should be in nature, by
corresponding gradations of light everywhere around us, but which is
isolated and cut off suddenly by a frame and a wall, and surrounded by
darkness and coldness, what can we expect but that it should surprise
and shock the feelings? Suppose, where the §9. Color of the
Napoleon.Napoleon hung in the Academy last year, there could have been
left, instead, an opening in the wall, and through that opening, in the
midst of the obscurity of the dim room and the smoke-laden atmosphere,
there could suddenly have been poured the full glory of a tropical
sunset, reverberated from the sea: How would you have shrunk, blinded,
from its scarlet and intolerable lightnings! What picture in the room
would not have been blackness after it? And why then do you blame Turner
because he dazzles you? Does not the falsehood rest with those who do
not? There was not one hue in this whole picture which was not far
below what nature would have used in the same circumstances, nor was
there one inharmonious or at variance with the rest;—the stormy
blood-red of the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the rich
crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed; the pure gold and
purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it all, the deep passage of
solemn blue, where the cold moonlight fell on one pensive spot of the
limitless shore—all were given with harmony as perfect as their color
was intense; and if, instead of passing, as I doubt not you
did, in the hurry of your unreflecting prejudice, you had paused but so
much as one quarter of an hour before the picture, you would have found
the sense of air and space blended with every line, and breathing in
every cloud, and every color instinct and radiant with visible, glowing,
absorbing light.
It is to be observed, however, in general, that wherever in brilliant
effects of this kind, we approach to anything like a true statement of
nature's color, there must yet be a distinct §10. Necessary discrepancy
between the attainable brilliancy of color and light.difference in the
impression we convey, because we cannot approach her light. All such
hues are usually given by her with an accompanying intensity of sunbeams
which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it cannot rest on the
actual colors, nor understand what they are; and hence in art, in
rendering all effects of this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of
imitation, which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary
observer; because we can only give one series of truths, those of color,
and are unable to give the accompanying truths of light, so that the
more true we are in color, the greater, ordinarily, will be the
discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of
light. But the painter who really loves nature will not, on this
account, give you a faded and feeble image, which indeed may appear to
you to be right, because your feelings can detect no discrepancy in its
parts, but which he knows to derive its apparent truth from a
systematized falsehood. No; he will make you understand and feel that
art cannot imitate nature—that where it appears to do so, it must
malign her, and mock her. He will give you, or state to you, such truths
as are in his power, completely and perfectly; and those which he cannot
give, he will leave to your imagination. If you are acquainted with
nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you will supply
from your memory and from your heart that light which he cannot give. If
you are unacquainted with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen
to satisfy your feelings; but do not ask for the truth which you would
not acknowledge and could not enjoy.
Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be to do
away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit, not by
lowering his color, but by increasing his light. § 11. This
discrepancy less in Turner than in other colorists.And it is indeed by
this that the works of Turner are peculiarly distinguished from those of
all other colorists, by the dazzling intensity, namely, of the light
which he sheds through every hue, and which, far more than their
brilliant color, is the real source of their overpowering effect upon
the eye, an effect so reasonably made the subject of perpetual
animadversion, as if the sun which they represent were quite a quiet,
and subdued, and gentle, and manageable luminary, and never dazzled
anybody, under any circumstances whatsoever. I am fond of standing by a
bright Turner in the Academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments
of the crowd—"What a glaring thing!" "I declare I can't look at it!"
"Don't it hurt your eyes?"—expressed as if they were in the constant
habit of looking the sun full in the face, with the most perfect comfort
and entire facility of vision. It is curious § 12. Its great extent in a
landscape attributed to Rubens.after hearing people malign some of
Turner's noble passages of light, to pass to some really ungrammatical
and false picture of the old masters, in which we have color given
without light. Take, for instance, the landscape attributed to Rubens,
No. 175, in the Dulwich Gallery. I never have spoken, and I never will
speak of Rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and whatever
imperfections in his art may have resulted from his unfortunate want of
seriousness and incapability of true passion, his calibre of mind was
originally such that I believe the world may see another Titian and
another Raffaelle, before it sees another Rubens. But I have before
alluded to the violent license he occasionally assumes; and there is an
instance of it in this picture apposite to the immediate question. The
sudden streak and circle of yellow and crimson in the middle of the sky
of that picture, being the occurrence of a fragment of a sunset color in
pure daylight, and in perfect isolation, while at the same time it is
rather darker, when translated into light and shade, than brighter than
the rest of the sky, is a case of such bold absurdity, come from whose
pencil it may, that if every error which Turner has fallen into in the
whole course of his life were concentrated into one, that one would not
equal it; and as our connoisseurs gaze upon this with never-ending
approbation, we must not be surprised that the accurate perceptions
which thus take delight in pure fiction, should consistently
be disgusted by Turner's fidelity and truth.
Hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vividness of pure color, and
showing that it is used by Turner only where nature uses it, and in no
less degree. But we have hitherto, § 13. Turner scarcely ever uses pure
or vivid color.therefore, been speaking of a most limited and
uncharacteristic portion of his works; for Turner, like all great
colorists, is distinguished not more for his power of dazzling and
overwhelming the eye with intensity of effect, than for his power of
doing so by the use of subdued and gentle means. There is no man living
more cautious and sparing in the use of pure color than Turner. To say
that he never perpetrates anything like the blue excrescences of
foreground, or hills shot like a housekeeper's best silk gown, with
blue and red, which certain of our celebrated artists consider the
essence of the sublime, would be but a poor compliment. I might as well
praise the portraits of Titian because they have not the grimace and
paint of a clown in a pantomime; but I do say, and say with confidence,
that there is scarcely a landscape artist of the present day, however
sober and lightless their effects may look, who does not employ more
pure and raw color than Turner; and that the ordinary tinsel and trash,
or rather vicious and perilous stuff, according to the power of the mind
producing it, with which the walls of our Academy are half covered,
disgracing, in weak hands, or in more powerful, degrading and corrupting
our whole school of art, is based on a system of color beside which
Turner's is as Vesta to Cotytto—the chastity of fire to the foulness of
earth. Every picture of this great colorist has, in one or two parts of
it, (key-notes of the whole,) points where the system of each individual
color is concentrated by a single stroke, as pure as it can come from
the pallet; but throughout the great space and extent of even the most
brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw color; that is to
say, there is no warmth which has not gray in it, and no blue which has
not warmth in it; and the tints in which he most excels and distances
all other men, the most cherished and inimitable portions of his color,
are, as with all perfect colorists they must be, his grays.
It is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of the
Mercury and Argus with the various illustrations of the serenity, space,
and sublimity naturally inherent in blue and pink, of which every year's
exhibition brings forward enough and to spare. In the Mercury and Argus,
the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with gray and
pearly white, the gold color of the light warming it more or less as it
approaches or retires from the sun; but throughout, there is not a grain
of pure blue; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling
gray and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky
mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a
single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every
part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader
can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction
to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer
piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard,
with heavy extra charge for ultramarine.
Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful principle of delicate
and subdued color is carried out with a care and labor of which it is
difficult to form a conception. He gives a § 14. The basis of gray,
under all his vivid hues.dash of pure white for his highest light; but
all the other whites of his picture are pearled down with gray or gold.
He gives a fold of pure crimson to the drapery of his nearest figure;
but all his other crimsons will be deepened with black, or warmed with
yellow. In one deep reflection of his distant sea, we catch a trace of
the purest blue; but all the rest is palpitating with a varied and
delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which indeed looks vivid blue as
a mass, but is only so by opposition. It is the most difficult, the most
rare thing, to find in his works a definite space, however small, of
unconnected color; that is, either of a blue which has nothing to
connect it with the warmth, or of a warm color which has nothing to
connect it with the grays of the whole; and the result is, that there is
a general system and undercurrent of gray pervading the whole of his
color, out of which his highest lights, and those local touches of pure
color, which are, as I said before, the key-notes of the picture, flash
with the peculiar brilliancy and intensity in which he stands alone.
Intimately associated with this toning down and connection of the colors
actually used, is his inimitable power of varying and blending them, so
as never to give a quarter of an inch of § 15. The variety and fulness
even of his most simple tones.canvas without a change in it, a melody as
well as a harmony of one kind or another. Observe, I am not at present
speaking of this as artistical or desirable in itself, not as a
characteristic of the great colorist, but as the aim of the simple
follower of nature. For it is strange to see how marvellously nature
varies the most general and simple of her tones. A mass of mountain seen
against the light, may, at first, appear all of one blue; and so it is,
blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. But
look how that blue is made up. There are black shadows in it under the
crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray
half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth
and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every
tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual
character in the universal will. Who is there who can do this as Turner
will? The old masters would have settled the matter at once with a
transparent, agreeable, but monotonous gray. Many among the moderns
would probably be equally monotonous with absurd and false colors.
Turner only would give the uncertainty—the palpitating, perpetual
change—the subjection of all to a great influence, without one part or
portion being lost or merged in it—the unity of action with infinity of
agent. And I wish to insist on this the § 16. Following the infinite and
unapproachable variety of nature.more particularly, because it is one of
the eternal principles of nature, that she will not have one line nor
color, nor one portion nor atom of space without a change in it. There
is not one of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of
perpetual variation: I do not mean in time, but in space. There is not a
leaf in the world which has the same color visible over its whole
surface; it has a white high light somewhere; and in proportion as it
curves to or from that focus, the color is brighter or grayer. Pick up a
common flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes and
hues of color. Every bit of bare ground under your feet has in it a
thousand such—the gray pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient
vegetation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes and
shadows, might keep a painter at work for a month, if he were obliged to
follow them touch for touch: how much more, when the same infinity of
change is carried out with vastness of object and space. The extreme of
distance may appear at first monotonous; but the least examination will
show it to be full of every kind of change—that its outlines are
perpetually melting and appearing again—sharp here, vague there—now
lost altogether, now just hinted and still confused among each
other—and so forever in a state and necessity of change. Hence,
wherever in a painting we have unvaried color extended even over a small
space, there is falsehood. Nothing can be natural which is monotonous;
nothing true which only tells one story. The brown foreground and rocks
of Claude's Sinon before Priam are as false as color can be: first,
because there never was such a brown under sunlight, for even the sand
and cinders (volcanic tufa) about Naples, granting that he had studied
from these ugliest of all formations, are, where they are fresh
fractured, golden and lustrous in full light compared to these ideals of
crag, and become, like all other rocks, quiet and gray when weathered;
and secondly, because no rock that ever nature stained is without its
countless breaking tints of varied vegetation. And even Stanfield,
master as he is of rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here and
there a little bit of mud, instead of stone.
What I am next about to say with respect to Turner's color, I should
wish to be received with caution, as it admits of dispute. I think that
the first approach to viciousness of color in §17. His dislike of purple
and fondness for the opposition of yellow and black. The principles of
nature in this respect.any master is commonly indicated chiefly by a
prevalence of purple, and an absence of yellow. I think nature mixes
yellow with almost every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using
red without it, but frequently using yellow with scarcely any red; and I
believe it will be in consequence found that her favorite opposition,
that which generally characterizes and gives tone to her color, is
yellow and black, passing, as it retires, into white and blue. It is
beyond dispute that the great fundamental opposition of Rubens is yellow
and black; and that on this, concentrated in one part of the picture,
and modified in various grays throughout, chiefly depend the tones of
all his finest works. And in Titian, though there is a far
greater tendency to the purple than in Rubens, I believe no red is ever
mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it, which has not in it a
modifying quantity of yellow. At all events, I am nearly certain that
whatever rich and pure purples are introduced locally, by the great
colorists, nothing is so destructive of all fine color as the slightest
tendency to purple in general tone; and I am equally certain that Turner
is distinguished from all the vicious colorists of the present day, by
the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow, and the
intermediate grays, while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is
invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples. So fond indeed is Turner
of black and yellow, that he has given us more than one composition,
both drawings and paintings, based on these two colors alone, of which
the magnificent Quillebœuf, which I consider one of the most perfect
pieces of simple color existing, is a most striking example; and I think
that where, as in some of the late Venices, there has been something
like a marked appearance of purple tones, even though exquisitely
corrected by vivid orange and warm green in the foreground, the general
color has not been so perfect or truthful: my own feelings would always
guide me rather to the warm grays of such pictures as the Snow Storm, or
the glowing scarlet and gold of the Napoleon and Slave Ship. But I do
not insist at present on this part of the subject, as being perhaps more
proper for future examination, when we are considering the ideal of
color.
The above remarks have been made entirely with reference to the recent
Academy pictures, which have been chiefly attacked for their color. I by
no means intend them to apply to §18. His early works are false in
color.the early works of Turner, those which the enlightened newspaper
critics are perpetually talking about as characteristic of a time when
Turner was "really great." He is, and was, really great, from the time
when he first could hold a brush, but he never was so great as he is
now. The Crossing the Brook, glorious as it is as a composition, and
perfect in all that is most desirable and most ennobling in art, is
scarcely to be looked upon as a piece of color; it is an agreeable,
cool, gray rendering of space and form, but it is not color; if it be
regarded as such, it is thoroughly false and vapid, and very
far inferior to the tones of the same kind given by Claude. The reddish
brown in the foreground of the Fall of Carthage, with all diffidence be
it spoken, is, as far as my feelings are competent to judge, crude,
sunless, and in every way wrong; and both this picture and the Building
of Carthage, though this latter is far the finer of the two, are quite
unworthy of Turner as a colorist.
Not so with the drawings; these, countless as they are, from the
earliest to the latest, though presenting an unbroken chain of
increasing difficulty overcome, and truth illustrated, are all, § 19.
His drawings invariably perfect.according to their aim, equally
faultless as to color. Whatever we have hitherto said, applies to them
in its fullest extent; though each, being generally the realization of
some effect actually seen, and realized but once, requires almost a
separate essay. As a class, they are far quieter and chaster than the
Academy pictures, and, were they better known, might enable our
connoisseurs to form a somewhat more accurate judgment of the intense
study of nature on which all Turner's color is based.
One point only remains to be noted respecting his system of color
generally—its entire subordination to light and shade, a subordination
which there is no need to prove here, as every § 20. The subjection of
his system of color to that of chiaroscuro.engraving from his works—and
few are unengraved—is sufficient demonstration of it. I have before
shown the inferiority and unimportance in nature of color, as a truth,
compared with light and shade. That inferiority is maintained and
asserted by all really great works of color; but most by Turner's as
their color is most intense. Whatever brilliancy he may choose to
assume, is subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, from which
there is no appeal. No richness nor depth of tint is considered of value
enough to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light. No
brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with the depth of a
determined shadow. And hence it is, that while engravings from works far
less splendid in color are often vapid and cold, because the little
color employed has not been rightly based on light and shade, an
engraving from Turner is always beautiful and forcible in proportion as
the color of the original has been intense, and never in a single
instance has failed to express the picture as a perfect
composition.[21] Powerful and captivating and faithful as his color is,
it is the least important of all his excellences, because it is the
least important feature of nature. He paints in color, but he thinks in
light and shade; and were it necessary, rather than lose one line of his
forms, or one ray of his sunshine, would, I apprehend, be content to
paint in black and white to the end of his life. It is by mistaking the
shadow for the substance, and aiming at the brilliancy and the fire,
without perceiving of what deep-studied shade and inimitable
form it is at once the result and the illustration, that the host of his
imitators sink into deserved disgrace. With him, as with all the
greatest painters, and in Turner's more than all, the hue is a beautiful
auxiliary in working out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not
the source nor the essence of that impression; it is little more than a
visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind in the reception of
nobler ideas—as sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings
for the reading of the mysteries of God.
"Cæcus adulator—Dignus
Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes,
Blandaque devexæ iactaret basia rhedæ."
There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great colorist
than his power of using greens in strange places without their being
felt as such, or at least than a constant preference of green gray to
purple gray. And this hue of Poussin's clouds would have been perfectly
agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough in the
rest of the picture to have thrown it into gray. It is only because the
lower clouds are pure white and blue, and because the trees are of the
same color as the clouds, that the cloud color becomes false. There is a
fine instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned gray by the
opposition of warm color, in Turner's Devonport with the Dockyards.
This is saying too much; for it not unfrequently happens that the
light and shade of the original is lost in the engraving, the effect of
which is afterwards partially recovered, with the aid of the artist
himself, by introductions of new features. Sometimes, when a drawing
depends chiefly on color, the engraver gets unavoidably embarrassed, and
must be assisted by some change or exaggeration of the effect; but the
more frequent case is, that the engraver's difficulties result merely
from his inattention to, or wilful deviations from his original; and
that the artist is obliged to assist him by such expedients as the error
itself suggests.
Not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in reviewing a
picture after some time has elapsed since its completion, even the
painter is liable to make unnecessary or hurtful changes. In the plate
of the Old Temeraire, lately published in Finden's gallery, I do not
know whether it was Turner or the engraver who broke up the water into
sparkling ripple, but it was a grievous mistake, and has destroyed the
whole dignity and value of the conception. The flash of lightning in the
Winchelsea of the England series does not exist in the original; it is
put in to withdraw the attention of the spectator from the sky which the
engraver destroyed.
There is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that color can
be expressed by particular characters of line; and in the endeavor to
distinguish by different lines, different colors of equal depth, they
frequently lose the whole system of light and shade. It will hardly be
credited that the piece of foreground on the left of Turner's Modern
Italy, represented in the Art-Union engraving as nearly coal black, is
in the original of a pale warm gray, hardly darker than the sky. All
attempt to record color in engraving, is heraldry out of its place: the
engraver has no power beyond that of expressing transparency or opacity
by greater or less openness of line, (for the same depth of tint is
producible by lines with very different intervals.)
Texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel, and
ought not to be laboriously sought after; nature's surfaces are
distinguished more by form than texture; a stone is often smoother than
a leaf; but if texture is to be given, let the engraver at least be sure
that he knows what the texture of the object actually is, and how to
represent it. The leaves in the foreground of the engraved Mercury and
Argus have all of them three or four black lines across them. What sort
of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these? The stones in
the foreground of Turner's Llanthony received from the artist the
powdery texture of sandstone; the engraver covered them with contorted
lines and turned them into old timber.
A still more fatal cause of failure is the practice of making out or
finishing what the artist left incomplete. In the England plate of
Dudley, there are two offensive blank windows in the large building with
the chimney on the left. These are engraver's improvements; in the
original they are barely traceable, their lines being excessively faint
and tremulous as with the movement of heated air between them and the
spectator: their vulgarity is thus taken away, and the whole building
left in one grand unbroken mass. It is almost impossible to break
engravers of this unfortunate habit. I have even heard of their taking
journeys of some distance in order to obtain knowledge of the details
which the artist intentionally omitted; and the evil will necessarily
continue until they receive something like legitimate artistical
education. In one or two instances, however, especially in small plates,
they have shown great feeling; the plates of Miller (especially those of
the Turner illustrations to Scott) are in most instances perfect and
beautiful interpretations of the originals; so those of Goodall in
Rogers's works, and Cousens's in the Rivers of France; those of the
Yorkshire series are also very valuable, though singularly inferior to
the drawings. But none even of these men appear capable of producing a
large plate. They have no knowledge of the means of rendering their
lines vital or valuable; cross-hatching stands for everything; and
inexcusably, for though we cannot expect every engraver to etch like
Rembrandt or Albert Durer, or every wood-cutter to draw like Titian, at
least something of the system and power of the grand works of those men
might be preserved, and some mind and meaning stolen into the
reticulation of the restless modern lines.
OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.
It is not my intention to enter, in the present portion of the work,
upon any examination of Turner's particular effects of light. We must
know something about what is beautiful before § 1. We are not at present
to examine particular effects of light.we speak of these.
At present I wish only to insist upon two great principles of
chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout the works of the great modern
master, and set at defiance by the ancients—great general laws, which
may, or may not, be sources of beauty, but whose observance is
indisputably necessary to truth.
Go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for a tree with a broad
trunk, having rather delicate boughs hanging down on the sunny side,
near the trunk. Stand four or five yards from it, with your back to the
sun. You will find that the boughs between you and the trunk of the tree
are very indistinct, that you confound them in places with the trunk
itself, and cannot possibly trace one of them from its insertion to its
extremity. But the shadows which they cast upon the trunk, you will find
clear, dark, and distinct, perfectly traceable through their whole
course, except when they are interrupted by the crossing boughs. And if
you retire backwards, you will come to a point where you cannot see the
intervening boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there,
but can still see their shadows perfectly plain. Now, this may serve to
show you the immense prominence and importance of shadows where there is
anything like bright light. They are, in fact, commonly far more
conspicuous than the thing which casts them, for being as large as the
casting object, and altogether made up of a blackness deeper than the
darkest part of the casting object, (while that object is also broken up
with positive and reflected lights,) their large, broad,
unbroken spaces, tell strongly on the eye, especially as all form is
rendered partially, often totally invisible within them, and as they are
suddenly terminated by the sharpest lines which nature ever shows. For
no outline of objects whatsoever is so sharp as the edge of a close
shadow. Put your finger over a piece of white paper in the sun, and
observe the difference between the softness of the outline of the finger
itself and the decision of the edge of the shadow. And note also the
excessive gloom of the latter. A piece of black cloth, laid in the
light, will not attain one-fourth of the blackness of the paper under
the shadow.
Hence shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most
conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights. All forms
are understood and explained chiefly by their § 2. And therefore the
distinctness of shadows is the chief means of expressing vividness of
light.agency: the roughness of the bark of a tree, for instance, is not
seen in the light, nor in the shade: it is only seen between the two,
where the shadows of the ridges explain it. And hence, if we have to
express vivid light, our very first aim must be to get the shadows sharp
and visible; and this is not to be done by blackness, (though indeed
chalk on white paper is the only thing which comes up to the intensity
of real shadows,) but by keeping them perfectly flat, keen, and even. A
very pale shadow, if it be quite flat—if it conceal the details of the
objects it crosses—if it be gray and cold compared to their color, and
very sharp edged, will be far more conspicuous, and make everything out
of it look a great deal more like sunlight, than a shadow ten times its
depth, shaded off at the edge, and confounded with § 3. Total absence of
such distinctness in the works of the Italian school.the color of the
objects on which it falls. Now the old masters of the Italian school, in
almost all of their works, directly reverse this principle: they blacken
their shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, and everything
in it invisible; but they make a point of losing their edges, and
carrying them off by gradation; in consequence utterly destroying every
appearance of sunlight. All their shadows are the faint, secondary
darknesses of mere daylight; the sun has nothing whatever to do with
them. The shadow between the pages of the book which you hold in your
hand is distinct and visible enough, (though you are, I suppose, reading it by the ordinary daylight of your room,) out of the sun;
and this weak and secondary shadow is all that we ever find in the
Italian masters, as indicative of sunshine. Even § 4. And partial
absence in the Dutch.Cuyp and Berghem, though they know thoroughly well
what they are about in their foregrounds, forget the principle in their
distances; and though in Claude's seaports, where he has plain
architecture to deal with, he gives us something like real shadows along
the stones, the moment we come to ground and foliage with lateral light,
away go the shadows and the sun together. In the Marriage of Isaac and
Rebecca, in our own gallery, the trunks of the trees between the
water-wheel and the white figure in the middle distance, are dark and
visible; but their shadows are scarcely discernible on the ground, and
are quite vague and lost in the building. In nature, every bit of the
shadow would have been darker than the darkest part of the trunks, and
both on the ground and building would have been defined and conspicuous;
while the trunks themselves would have been faint, confused, and
indistinguishable, in their illumined parts, from the grass or distance.
So in Poussin's Phocion, the shadow of the stick on the stone in the
right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see the stick plain
all the way. In nature's sunlight it would have been the direct
reverse—you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all the way
down, but you would have had to look for the stick, which in all
probability would in several places have been confused with the stone
behind it.
And so throughout the works of Claude, Poussin, and Salvator, we shall
find, especially in their conventional foliage, and unarticulated
barbarisms of rock, that their whole sum and substance of chiaroscuro is
merely the gradation and variation which nature gives in the body of
her shadows, and that all which they do to express sunshine, she does to
vary shade. They take only one step, while she always takes two;
marking, in the first place, with violent decision, the great transition
from sun to shade, and then varying the shade itself with a thousand
gentle gradations and double shadows, in themselves equivalent, and more
than equivalent, to all that the old masters did for their entire
chiaroscuro.
Now if there be one principle, or secret more than another, on which
Turner depends for attaining brilliancy of light, it is his
clear and exquisite drawing of the shadows. Whatever is § 5. The
perfection of Turner's works in this respect.obscure, misty, or
undefined in his objects or his atmosphere, he takes care that the
shadows be sharp and clear—and then he knows that the light will take
care of itself, and he makes them clear, not by blackness, but by
excessive evenness, unity, and sharpness of edge. He will keep them
clear and distinct, and make them felt as shadows, though they are so
faint, that, but for their decisive forms, we should not have observed
them for darkness at all. He will throw them one after another like
transparent veils, along the earth and upon the air, till the whole
picture palpitates with them, and yet the darkest of them will be a
faint gray, imbued and penetrated with light. The pavement on the left
of the Hero and Leander, is about the most thorough piece of this kind
of sorcery that I remember in art; but of the general principle, not one
of his works is without constant evidence. Take the vignette of the
garden opposite the title-page of Rogers's Poems, and note the drawing
of the nearest balustrade on the right. The balusters themselves are
faint and misty, and the light through them feeble; but the shadows of
them are sharp and dark, and the intervening light as intense as it can
be left. And see how much more distinct the shadow of the running figure
is on the pavement, than the checkers of the pavement itself. Observe
the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page 91, how they conquer all
the details of the trunk itself, and become darker and more conspicuous
than any part of the boughs or limbs, and so in the vignette to
Campbell's Beechtree's Petition. Take the beautiful concentration of all
that is most characteristic of Italy as she is, at page 168 of Rogers's
Italy, where we have the long shadows of the trunks made by far the most
conspicuous thing in the whole foreground, and hear how Wordsworth, the
keenest-eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in
nature, illustrates Turner here, as we shall find him doing in all other
points.
"At the root
Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare
And slender stem, while here I sit at eve,
Oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path,
Traced faintly in the greensward."
Excursion, Book VI
So again in the Rhymer's Glen, (Illustrations to Scott,) note the
intertwining of the shadows across the path, and the checkering of the
trunks by them; and again on the bridge in the Armstrong's Tower; and
yet more in the long avenue of Brienne, where we have a length of two or
three miles expressed by the playing shadows alone, and the whole
picture filled with sunshine by the long lines of darkness cast by the
figures on the snow. The Hampton Court in the England series, is another
very striking instance. In fact, the general system of execution
observable in all Turner's drawings, is to work his grounds richly and
fully, sometimes stippling, and giving infinity of delicate, mysterious,
and ceaseless detail; and on the ground so prepared to cast his shadows
with one dash of the brush, leaving an excessively sharp edge of watery
color. Such at least is commonly the case in such coarse and broad
instances as those I § 6. The effect of his shadows upon the light.have
above given. Words are not accurate enough, nor delicate enough to
express or trace the constant, all-pervading influence of the finer and
vaguer shadows throughout his works, that thrilling influence which
gives to the light they leave, its passion and its power. There is not a
stone, not a leaf, not a cloud, over which light is not felt to be
actually passing and palpitating before our eyes. There is the motion,
the actual wave and radiation of the darted beam—not the dull universal
daylight, which falls on the landscape without life, or direction, or
speculation, equal on all things and dead on all things; but the
breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels, and receives, and
rejoices, and acts—which chooses one thing and rejects another—which
seeks, and finds, and loses again—leaping from rock to rock, from leaf
to leaf, from wave to wave,—glowing, or flashing, or scintillating,
according to what it strikes, or in its holier moods, absorbing and
enfolding all things in the deep fulness of its repose, and then again
losing itself in bewilderment, and doubt, and dimness; or perishing and
passing away, entangled in drifting mist, or melted into melancholy air,
but still,—kindling, or declining, sparkling or still, it is the living
light, which breathes in its deepest, most entranced rest, which sleeps,
but never dies.
I need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinction between the
works of the old masters and those of the great modern
landscape-painters in this respect. It is one which the § 7. The
distinction holds good between almost all the works of the ancient and
modern schools.reader can perfectly well work out for himself, by the
slightest systematic attention,—one which he will find existing, not
merely between this work and that, but throughout the whole body of
their productions, and down to every leaf and line. And a little careful
watching of nature, especially in her foliage and foregrounds, and
comparison of her with Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator, will soon
show him that those artists worked entirely on conventional principles,
not representing what they saw, but what they thought would make a
handsome picture; and even when they went to nature, which I believe to
have been a very much rarer practice with them than their biographers
would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they
knew to be there, but not what they saw there.[22] I believe you may
search the foregrounds of Claude, from one end of Europe to another, and
you will not find the shadow of one leaf cast upon another. You will
find leaf after leaf painted more or less boldly or brightly out of the
black ground, and you will find dark leaves defined in perfect form upon
the light; but you will not find the form of a single leaf disguised or
interrupted by the shadow of another. And Poussin and Salvator are still
farther from anything like genuine truth. There is nothing in their
pictures which might not be manufactured in their painting-room, with a
branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of weeds before them, to
give them the form of the leaves. And it is refreshing to turn from
their ignorant and impotent repetitions of childish conception, to the
clear, close, genuine studies of modern artists; for it is not Turner
only, (though here, as in all other points, the first,) who is
remarkable for fine and expressive decision of chiaroscuro. Some
passages by J. D. Harding are thoroughly admirable in this respect,
though this master is getting a little too much into a habit of general
keen execution, which prevents the parts which ought to be especially
decisive from being felt as such, and which makes his pictures,
especially the large ones, look a little thin. But some of his later
passages of rock foreground have, taken in the abstract,
been beyond all praise, owing to the exquisite forms and firm
expressiveness of their shadows. And the chiaroscuro of Stanfield is
equally deserving of the most attentive study.
The second point to which I wish at present to direct attention has
reference to the arrangement of light and shade. It is the constant
habit of nature to use both her highest lights and § 8. Second great
principle of chiaroscuro. Both high light and deep shadow are used in
equal quantity and only in points.deepest shadows in exceedingly small
quantity; always in points, never in masses. She will give a large mass
of tender light in sky or water, impressive by its quantity, and a large
mass of tender shadow relieved against it, in foliage, or hill, or
building; but the light is always subdued if it be extensive—the shadow
always feeble if it be broad. She will then fill up all the rest of her
picture with middle tints and pale grays of some sort or another, and on
this quiet and harmonious whole, she will touch her high lights in
spots—the foam of an isolated wave—the sail of a solitary vessel—the
flash of the sun from a wet roof—the gleam of a single whitewashed
cottage—or some such sources of local brilliancy, she will use so
vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade
by comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will use the black
hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some shaded
figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so sharply
as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison; thus
reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint,
approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet
sharply separated from the utmost degrees either of the one or the
other.
Now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on art seem to have
noticed the great principle of nature in this respect. They all talk of
deep shadow as a thing that may be given in § 9. Neglect or
contradiction of this principle by writers on art.quantity,—one fourth
of the picture, or, in certain effects, much more. Barry, for instance,
says that the practice of the great painters, who "best understood the
effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most part, to make the mass of
middle tint larger than the light, and the mass of dark larger than the
masses of light and middle tint together, i.e., occupying more than
one-half of the picture. Now I do not know what we are to
suppose is meant by "understanding chiaroscuro." If it means being able
to manufacture agreeable patterns in the shape of pyramids, and crosses,
and zigzags, into which arms and legs are to be persuaded, and passion
and motion arranged, for the promotion and encouragement of the cant of
criticism, such a principle may be productive of the most advantageous
results. But if it means, being acquainted with the deep, perpetual,
systematic, unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's
chiaroscuro—if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are
not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be
coadjutors—then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a
principle, § 10. And consequent misguiding of the student.is anything
more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. And my firm
belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the
great Circe of art—the great transformer of mind into sensuality—no
fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a peril and
stumbling-block to the young student, as the admiration he hears
bestowed on such artificial, false, and juggling chiaroscuro, and the
instruction he receives, based on such principles as that given us by
Fuseli—that "mere natural light and shade, however separately or
individually true, is not always legitimate chiaroscuro in art." It may
not always be agreeable to a sophisticated, unfeeling, and perverted
mind; but the student had better throw up his art at once, than proceed
on the conviction that any other can ever be legitimate. I believe I
shall be perfectly well able to prove, in following parts of the work,
that "mere natural light and shade" is the only fit and faithful
attendant of the highest art; and that all tricks—all visible, intended
arrangement—all extended shadows and narrow lights—everything in fact,
in the least degree artificial, or tending to make the mind dwell upon
light and shade as such, is an injury, instead of an aid, to conceptions
of high ideal dignity. I believe I shall be able also to show, that
nature manages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and cleverly
than people fancy;—that "mere natural light and shade" is a very much
finer thing than most artists can put together, and that none think they
can improve upon it but those who never understood it.
But however this may be, it is beyond dispute that every permission
given to the student to amuse himself with painting one figure all
black, and the next all white, and throwing them out § 11. The great
value of a simple chiaroscuro.with a background of nothing—every
permission given to him to spoil his pocketbook with sixths of sunshine
and sevenths of shade, and other such fractional sublimities, is so much
more difficulty laid in the way of his ever becoming a master; and that
none are in the right road to real excellence, but those who are
struggling to render the simplicity, purity, and inexhaustible variety
of nature's own chiaroscuro in open, cloudless daylight, giving the
expanse of harmonious light—the speaking, decisive shadow—and the
exquisite grace, tenderness, and grandeur of aerial opposition of local
color and equally illuminated lines. No chiaroscuro is so difficult as
this; and none so noble, chaste, or impressive. On this part of the
subject, however, I must not enlarge at present. I wish now only to
speak of those great principles of chiaroscuro, which nature observes,
even when she is most working for effect—when she is playing with
thunder-clouds and sunbeams, and throwing one thing out and obscuring
another, with the most marked artistical feeling and intention;—even
then, she never forgets her great rule, to give precisely the same
quantity of deepest shade which she does of highest light, and no more;
points of the one answering to points of the other, and both vividly
conspicuous and separated from all the rest of the landscape.
And it is most singular that this separation, which is the great source
of brilliancy in nature, should not only be unobserved, but absolutely
forbidden by our great writers on art, who are § 12. The sharp
separation of nature's lights from her middle tint.always talking about
connecting the light with the shade by imperceptible gradations. Now
so surely as this is done, all sunshine is lost, for imperceptible
gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of objects seen out
of sunshine, in what is, in landscape, shadow. Nature's principle of
getting light is the direct reverse. She will cover her whole landscape
with middle tint, in which she will have as many gradations as you
please, and a great many more than you can paint; but on this middle
tint she touches her extreme lights, and extreme darks, isolated and
sharp, so that the eye goes to them directly, and feels them
to be key-notes of the whole composition. And although the dark touches
are less attractive than the light ones, it is not because they are less
distinct, but because they exhibit nothing; while the bright touches are
in parts where everything is seen, and where in consequence the eye goes
to rest. But yet the high lights do not exhibit anything in themselves,
they are too bright and dazzle the eye; and having no shadows in them,
cannot exhibit form, for form can only be seen by shadow of some kind or
another. Hence the highest lights and deepest darks agree in this, that
nothing is seen in either of them; that both are in exceedingly small
quantity, and both are marked and distinct from the middle tones of the
landscape—the one by their brilliancy, the other by their sharp edges,
even though many of the more energetic middle tints may approach their
intensity very closely.
I need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at any one of the works
of Turner, and you will perceive in a moment the exquisite observation
of all these principles; the sharpness, decision, § 13. The truth of
Turner.conspicuousness, and excessively small quantity, both of extreme
light and extreme shade, all the mass of the picture being graduated and
delicate middle tint. Take up the Rivers of France, for instance, and
turn over a few of the plates in succession.
1. Chateau Gaillard (vignette.)—Black figures and boats, points of
shade; sun-touches on castle, and wake of boat, of light. See how the
eye rests on both, and observe how sharp and separate all the lights
are, falling in spots, edged by shadow, but not melting off into it.
2. Orleans.—The crowded figures supply both points of shade and light.
Observe the delicate middle tint of both in the whole mass of buildings,
and compare this with the blackness of Canaletto's shadows, against
which neither figures nor anything else can ever tell, as points of
shade.
3. Blois.—White figures in boats, buttresses of bridge, dome of church
on the right, for light; woman on horseback, heads of boats, for shadow.
Note especially the isolation of the light on the church dome.
4. Chateau de Blois.—Torches and white figures for light, roof of
chapel and monks' dresses for shade.
5. Beaugency.—Sails and spire opposed to buoy and boats. An exquisite
instance of brilliant, sparkling, isolated touches of morning light.
6. Amboise.—White sail and clouds; cypresses under castle.
7. Chateau of Amboise.—The boat in the centre, with its reflections,
needs no comment. Note the glancing lights under the bridge. This is a
very glorious and perfect instance.
8. St. Julien, Tours.—Especially remarkable for its preservation of
deep points of gloom, because the whole picture is one of extended
shade.
I need scarcely go on. The above instances are taken as they happen to
come, without selection. The reader can proceed for himself. I may,
however, name a few cases of chiaroscuro more especially deserving of
his study. Scene between Quillebœuf and Villequier,—Honfleur,—Light
Towers of the Héve,—On the Seine between Mantes and Vernon,—The
Lantern at St. Cloud,—Confluence of Seine and Marne,—Troyes,—the
first and last vignette, and those at pages 36, 63, 95, 184, 192, 203,
of Rogers's poems; the first and second in Campbell, St. Maurice in the
Italy, where note the black stork; Brienne, Skiddaw, Mayburgh, Melrose,
Jedburgh, in the illustrations to Scott, and the vignettes to Milton,
not because these are one whit superior to others of his works, but
because the laws of which we have been speaking are more strikingly
developed in them, and because they have been well engraved. It is
impossible to reason from the larger plates, in which half the
chiaroscuro is totally destroyed by the haggling, blackening, and
"making out" of the engravers.
Compare Sect. II. Chap. II. § 6.
OF TRUTH OF SPACE:—FIRST AS DEPENDENT ON THE FOCUS
OF THE EYE.[23]
In the first chapter of this section I noticed the distinction between
real aerial perspective, and that overcharged contrast of light and
shade by which the old masters obtained their deceptive § 1. Space is
more clearly indicated by the drawing of objects than by their
hue.effect; and I showed that, though inferior to them in the precise
quality or tone of aerial color, our great modern master is altogether
more truthful in the expression of the proportionate relation of all his
distances to one another. I am now about to examine those modes of
expressing space, both in nature and art by far the most important,
which are dependent, not on the relative hues of objects, but on the
drawing of them: by far the most important, I say, because the most
constant and certain; for nature herself is not always aerial. Local
effects are frequent which interrupt and violate the laws of aerial
tone, and induce strange deception in our ideas of distance. I have
often seen the summit of a snowy mountain look nearer than its base,
owing to the perfect clearness of the upper air. But the drawing of
objects, that is to say, the degree in which their details and parts are
distinct or confused, is an unfailing and certain criterion of their
distance; and if this be rightly rendered in a painting, we shall have
genuine truth of space, in spite of many errors in aerial tone; while,
if this be neglected, all space will be destroyed, whatever
dexterity of tint may be employed to conceal the defective drawing.
First, then, it is to be noticed, that the eye, like any other lens,
must have its focus altered, in order to convey a distinct image of
objects at different distances; so that it is totally impossible § 2. It
is impossible to see objects at unequal distances distinctly at one
moment.to see distinctly, at the same moment, two objects, one of which
is much farther off than another. Of this, any one may convince himself
in an instant. Look at the bars of your window-frame, so as to get a
clear image of their lines and form, and you cannot, while your eye is
fixed on them, perceive anything but the most indistinct and shadowy
images of whatever objects may be visible beyond. But fix your eyes on
those objects, so as to see them clearly, and though they are just
beyond and apparently beside the window-frame, that frame will only be
felt or seen as a vague, flitting, obscure interruption to whatever is
perceived beyond it. A little attention directed to this fact will
convince every one of its universality, and prove beyond dispute that
objects at unequal distances cannot be seen together, not from the
intervention of air or mist, but from the impossibility of the rays
proceeding from both, converging to the same focus, so that the whole
impression, either of one or the other, must necessarily be confused,
indistinct, and inadequate.
But, be it observed (and I have only to request that whatever I say may
be tested by immediate experiment,) the difference of focus necessary is
greatest within the first five hundred yards, § 3. Especially such as
are both comparatively near.and therefore, though it is totally
impossible to see an object ten yards from the eye, and one a quarter of
a mile beyond it, at the same moment, it is perfectly possible to see
one a quarter of a mile off, and one five miles beyond it, at the same
moment. The consequence of this is, practically, that in a real
landscape, we can see the whole of what would be called the middle
distance and distance together, with facility and clearness; but while
we do so we can see nothing in the foreground beyond a vague and
indistinct arrangement of lines and colors; and that if, on the
contrary, we look at any foreground object, so as to receive a distinct
impression of it, the distance and middle distance become all disorder
and mystery.
And therefore, if in a painting our foreground is anything, our distance
must be nothing, and vice versa; for if we represent our near and
distant objects as giving both at once that distinct § 4. In painting,
therefore, either the foreground or distance must be partially
sacrificed.image to the eye, which we receive in nature from each, when
we look at them separately;[24] and if we distinguish them from each
other only by the air-tone; and indistinctness dependent on positive
distance, we violate one of the most essential principles of nature; we
represent that as seen at once which can only be seen by two separate
acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had represented
four sides of a cubic object visible together.
Now, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter of the old school,
as far as I remember, ever paid the slightest attention. Finishing their
foregrounds clearly and sharply, and § 5. Which not being done by the
old masters, they could not express space.with vigorous impression on
the eye, giving even the leaves of their bushes and grass with perfect
edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance with equal attention to
what they could see of its details—they gave all that the eye can
perceive in a distance, when it is fully and entirely devoted to it, and
therefore, though masters of aerial tone, though employing every
expedient that art could supply to conceal the intersection of lines,
though caricaturing the force and shadow of near objects to throw them
close upon the eye, they never succeeded in truly
representing § 6. But modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying
out this principle.space. Turner introduced a new era in landscape art,
by showing that the foreground might be sunk for the distance, and that
it was possible to express immediate proximity to the spectator, without
giving anything like completeness to the forms of the near objects. This
is not done by slurred or soft lines, observe, (always the sign of vice
in art,) but by a decisive imperfection, a firm, but partial assertion
of form, which the eye feels indeed to be close home to it, and yet
cannot rest upon, or cling to, nor entirely understand, and from which
it is driven away of necessity, to those parts of distance on which it
is intended to repose. And this principle, originated by Turner, though
fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted on with judgment and
success by several less powerful artists of the English school. Some six
years ago, the brown moorland foregrounds of Copley Fielding were very
instructive in this respect. Not a line in them was made out, not a
single object clearly distinguishable. Wet broad sweeps of the brush,
sparkling, careless, and accidental as nature herself, always truthful
as far as they went, implying knowledge, though not expressing it,
suggested everything, while they represented nothing. But far off into
the mountain distance came the sharp edge and the delicate form; the
whole intention and execution of the picture being guided and exerted
where the great impression of space and size was to be given. The
spectator was compelled to go forward into the waste of hills—there,
where the sun broke wide upon the moor, he must walk and wander—he
could not stumble and hesitate over the near rocks, nor stop to botanize
on the first inches of his path.[25] And the impression of these
pictures was always great and enduring, as it was simple and truthful. I
do not know anything in art which has expressed more completely the
force and feeling of nature in these particular scenes. And it is a
farther illustration[26] of the principle we are insisting
upon, that where, as in some of his later works, he has bestowed more
labor on the foreground, the picture has lost both in space and
sublimity. And among artists in general, who are either not aware of the
principle, or fear to act upon it, (for it requires no small courage, as
well as skill, to treat a foreground with that indistinctness and
mystery which they have been accustomed to consider as characteristic of
distance,) the foreground is not only felt, as every landscape painter
will confess, to be the most embarrassing and unmanageable part of the
picture, but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will go near to
destroy the effect of the rest of the composition. Thus Callcott's Trent
is severely injured by the harsh group of foreground figures; and
Stanfield very rarely gets through an Academy picture without destroying
much of its space, by too much determination of near form; while Harding
constantly sacrifices his distance, and compels the spectator to dwell
on the foreground altogether, though indeed, with such foregrounds as he
gives us, we are most happy so to do. But it § 7. Especially of
Turner.is in Turner only that we see a bold and decisive choice of the
distance and middle distance, as his great object of attention; and by
him only that the foreground is united and adapted to it, not by any
want of drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of execution, but by the
most precise and beautiful indication or suggestion of just so much of
even the minutest forms as the eye can see when its focus is not adapted
to them. And herein is another reason for the vigor and wholeness of the
effect of Turner's works at any distance; while those of almost all
other artists are sure to lose space as soon as we lose sight of the
details.
And now we see the reason for the singular, and to the ignorant in art,
the offensive execution of Turner's figures. I do not mean to assert
that there is any reason whatsoever, for bad § 8. Justification of the
want of drawing in Turner's figures.drawing, (though in landscape it
matters exceedingly little;) but that there is both reason and necessity
for that want of drawing which gives even the nearest figures round
balls with four pink spots in them instead of faces, and
four dashes of the brush instead of hands and feet; for it is totally
impossible that if the eye be adapted to receive the rays proceeding
from the utmost distance, and some partial impression from all the
distances, it should be capable of perceiving more of the forms and
features of near figures than Turner gives. And how absolutely necessary
to the faithful representation of space this indecision really is, might
be proved with the utmost ease by any one who had veneration enough for
the artist to sacrifice one of his pictures to his fame; who would take
some one of his works in which the figures were most incomplete, and
have them painted in by any of our delicate and first-rate
figure-painters, absolutely preserving every color and shade of Turner's
group, so as not to lose one atom of the composition, but giving eyes
for the pink spots, and feet for the white ones. Let the picture be so
exhibited in the Academy, and even novices in art would feel at a glance
that its truth of space was gone, that every one of its beauties and
harmonies had undergone decomposition, that it was now a grammatical
solecism, a painting of impossibilities, a thing to torture the eye, and
offend the mind.
I have left this chapter in its original place, because I am more
than ever convinced of the truth of the position advanced in the 8th
paragraph; nor can I at present assign any other cause, than that here
given, for what is there asserted; and yet I cannot but think that I
have allowed far too much influence to a change so slight as that which
we insensibly make in the focus of the eye; and that the real
justification of Turner's practice, with respect to some of his
foregrounds, is to be elsewhere sought. I leave the subject, therefore,
to the reader's consideration.
This incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its
incapability to comprehend a large portion of lateral space at once.
We indeed can see, at any one moment, little more than one point, the
objects beside it being confused and indistinct; but we need pay no
attention to this in art, because we can see just as little of the
picture as we can of the landscape without turning the eye, and hence
any slurring or confusing of one part of it, laterally, more than
another, is not founded on any truth of nature, but is an expedient of
the artist—and often an excellent and desirable one—to make the eye
rest where he wishes it. But as the touch expressive of a distant object
is as near upon the canvas as that expressive of a near one, both are
seen distinctly and with the same focus of the eye, and hence an
immediate contradiction of nature results, unless one or other be given
with an artificial and increased indistinctness, expressive of the
appearance peculiar to the unadapted focus. On the other hand, it must
be noted that the greater part of the effect above described is
consequent not on variation of focus, but on the different angle at
which near objects are seen by each of the two eyes, when both are
directed towards the distance.
There is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what
was before asserted respecting the necessity of botanical
fidelity—where the foreground is the object of attention. Compare Part
II. Sect. I. Chap. VII. § 10:—"To paint mist rightly, space rightly,
and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else
rightly."
Hardly. It would have been so only had the recently finished
foregrounds been as accurate in detail as they are abundant: they are
painful, I believe, not from their finish, but their falseness.
OF TRUTH OF SPACE:—SECONDLY, AS ITS APPEARANCE IS
DEPENDENT ON THE POWER OF THE EYE.
In the last chapter, we have seen how indistinctness of individual
distances becomes necessary in order to express the adaptation of the
eye to one or other of them; we have now to § 1. The peculiar
indistinctness dependent on the retirement of objects from the
eye.examine that kind of indistinctness which is dependent on real
retirement of the object even when the focus of the eye is fully
concentrated upon it. The first kind of indecision is that which belongs
to all objects which the eye is not adapted to, whether near or far off:
the second is that consequent upon the want of power in the eye to
receive a clear image of objects at a great distance from it, however
attentively it may regard them.
Draw on a piece of white paper, a square and a circle, each about a
twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, and blacken them so that their
forms may be very distinct; place your paper against the wall at the end
of the room, and retire from it a greater or less distance according as
you have drawn the figures larger or smaller. You will come to a point
where, though you can see both the spots with perfect plainness, you
cannot tell which is the square and which the circle.
Now this takes place of course with every object in a landscape, in
proportion to its distance and size. The definite forms of the leaves of
a tree, however sharply and separately they may § 2. Causes confusion,
but not annihilation of details.appear to come against the sky, are
quite indistinguishable at fifty yards off, and the form of everything
becomes confused before we finally lose sight of it. Now if the
character of an object, say the front of a house, be explained by a
variety of forms in it, as the shadows in the tops of the windows, the
lines of the architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc.; these lesser
details, as the object falls into distance, become confused and
undecided, each of them losing their definite forms, but all
being perfectly visible as something, a white or a dark spot or stroke,
not lost sight of, observe, but yet so seen that we cannot tell what
they are. As the distance increases, the confusion becomes greater,
until at last the whole front of the house becomes merely a flat, pale
space, in which, however, there is still observable a kind of richness
and checkering, caused by the details in it, which, though totally
merged and lost in the mass, have still an influence on the texture of
that mass; until at last the whole house itself becomes a mere light or
dark spot which we can plainly see, but cannot tell what it is, nor
distinguish it from a stone or any other object.
Now what I particularly wish to insist upon, is the state of vision in
which all the details of an object are seen, and yet seen in such
confusion and disorder that we cannot in the least tell §3. Instances in
various objects.what they are, or what they mean. It is not mist between
us and the object, still less is it shade, still less is it want of
character; it is a confusion, a mystery, an interfering of undecided
lines with each other, not a diminution of their number; window and
door, architrave and frieze, all are there: it is no cold and vacant
mass, it is full and rich and abundant, and yet you cannot see a single
form so as to know what it is. Observe your friend's face as he is
coming up to you; first it is nothing more than a white spot; now it is
a face, but you cannot see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even as spots;
you see a confusion of lines, a something which you know from experience
to be indicative of a face, and yet you cannot tell how it is so. Now he
is nearer, and you can see the spots for the eyes and mouth, but they
are not blank spots neither; there is detail in them; you cannot see the
lips, nor the teeth, nor the brows, and yet you see more than mere
spots; it is a mouth and an eye, and there is light and sparkle and
expression in them, but nothing distinct. Now he is nearer still, and
you can see that he is like your friend, but you cannot tell whether he
is or not; there is a vagueness and indecision of line still. Now you
are sure, but even yet there are a thousand things in his face which
have their effect in inducing the recognition, but which you cannot see
so as to know what they are.
Changes like these, and states of vision corresponding to them, take
place with each and all of the objects of nature, and two
great principles of truth are deducible from their observation. § 4. Two
great resultant truths; that nature is never distinct, and never
vacant.First, place an object as close to the eye as you like, there is
always something in it which you cannot see, except in the hinted and
mysterious manner above described. You can see the texture of a piece of
dress, but you cannot see the individual threads which compose it,
though they are all felt, and have each of them influence on the eye.
Secondly, place an object as far from the eye as you like, and until it
becomes itself a mere spot, there is always something in it which you
can see, though only in the hinted manner above described. Its shadows
and lines and local colors are not lost sight of as it retires; they get
mixed and indistinguishable, but they are still there, and there is a
difference always perceivable between an object possessing such details
and a flat or vacant space. The grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are
so far discernible that there will be a marked difference between its
appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. And thus nature is
never distinct and never vacant, she is always mysterious, but always
abundant; you always see something, but you never see all.
And thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which God has appointed
to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cultivated and
observant eye,—a finish which no distance can render invisible, and no
nearness comprehensible; which in every stone, every bough, every cloud,
and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented, and forever
exhaustless. And hence in art, every space or touch in which we can see
everything, or in which we can see nothing, is false. Nothing can be
true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does
not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which
represents nothing.
Now, I would not wish for any more illustrative or marked examples of
the total contradiction of these two great principles, than the
landscape works of the old masters, taken as a body:—the § 5. Complete
violation of both these principles by the old masters. They are either
distinct or vacant.Dutch masters furnishing the cases of seeing
everything, and the Italians of seeing nothing. The rule with both is
indeed the same, differently applied. "You shall see the bricks in the
wall, and be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but a dead flat;" but the Dutch give you the bricks, and the Italians
the flat. Nature's rule being the precise reverse—"You shall never be
able to count the bricks, but you shall never see a dead space."
Take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really great
landscape of Poussin (great in feeling at least) marked 260 in the
Dulwich Gallery. The houses are dead square masses with § 6. Instances
from Nicholas Poussin.a light side and a dark side, and black touches
for windows. There is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces,
the light wall is dead gray, the dark wall dead gray, and the windows
dead black. How differently would nature have treated us. She would have
let us see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the
Virgin at the angles, and the sharp, broken, broad shadows of the tiled
eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the
carved Roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes
of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners
of the mat blinds. All would have been there; not as such, not like the
corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but
a confusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine
for the eye to follow, microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every
atom and part of space with mystery, out of which would have arranged
itself the general impression of truth and life.
Again, take the distant city on the right bank of the river in Claude's
Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, in the National Gallery. I have seen many
cities in my life, and drawn not a few; § 7. From Claude.and I have seen
many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently supply us
with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion; but I
do not remember ever having met with either a city or a fortress
entirely composed of round towers of various heights and sizes, all
facsimiles of each other, and absolutely agreeing in the number of
battlements. I have, indeed, some faint recollection of having
delineated such an one in the first page of a spelling-book when I was
four years old; but, somehow or other, the dignity and perfection of the
ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was not considered to be
increased in value by the frontispiece. Without, however, venturing to
doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in
Claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to
originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it in its details.
Claude has permitted us to see every battlement, and the first impulse
we feel upon looking at the picture is to count how many there are.
Nature would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper
lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we should have
known from experience was indicative of battlements, but which we might
as well have thought of creating as of counting. Claude has given you
the walls below in one dead void of uniform gray. There is nothing to be
seen, nor felt, nor guessed at in it; it is gray paint or gray shade,
whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more. Nature
would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, thousands
of spots and lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted
for, but yet all characteristic and different from each other; breaking
lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation,
irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, sparkling
casements—all would have been there—none, indeed, seen as such, none
comprehensible or like themselves, but all visible; little shadows, and
sparkles, and scratches, making that whole space of color a transparent,
palpitating, various infinity.
Or take one of Poussin's extreme distances, such as that in the
Sacrifice of Isaac. It is luminous, retiring, delicate and perfect in
tone, and is quite complete enough to deceive and delight § 8. And G.
Poussin.the careless eye to which all distances are alike; nay, it is
perfect and masterly, and absolutely right if we consider it as a
sketch,—as a first plan of a distance, afterwards to be carried out in
detail. But we must remember that all these alternate spaces of gray and
gold are not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it—not its
substance, but its light and shade. They are just what nature would cast
over it, and write upon it with every cloud, but which she would cast in
play, and without carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible
importance. All her work and her attention would be given to bring out
from underneath this, and through this, the forms and the material
character which this can only be valuable to illustrate, not to conceal.
Every one of those broad spaces she would linger over in
protracted delight, teaching you fresh lessons in every hairsbreadth of
it, and pouring her fulness of invention into it, until the mind lost
itself in following her,—now fringing the dark edge of the shadow with
a tufted line of level forest—now losing it for an instant in a breath
of mist—then breaking it with the white gleaming angle of a narrow
brook—then dwelling upon it again in a gentle, mounded, melting
undulation, over the other side of which she would carry you down into a
dusty space of soft, crowded light, with the hedges, and the paths, and
the sprinkled cottages and scattered trees mixed up and mingled together
in one beautiful, delicate, impenetrable mystery—sparkling and melting,
and passing away into the sky, without one line of distinctness, or one
instant of vacancy.
Now it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow all this—he
cannot come up to the same degree and order of infinity—but he can give
us a lesser kind of infinity. He has not one-thousandth § 9. The
imperative necessity, in landscape painting, of fulness and finish.part
of the space to occupy which nature has; but he can, at least, leave no
part of that space vacant and unprofitable. If nature carries out her
minutiæ over miles, he has no excuse for generalizing in inches. And if
he will only give us all he can, if he will give us a fulness as
complete and as mysterious as nature's, we will pardon him for its being
the fulness of a cup instead of an ocean. But we will not pardon him,
if, because he has not the mile to occupy, he will not occupy the inch,
and because he has fewer means at his command, will leave half of those
in his power unexerted. Still less will we pardon him for mistaking the
sport of nature for her labor, and for following her only in her hour of
rest, without observing how she has worked for it. After spending
centuries in raising the forest, and guiding the river, and modelling
the mountain, she exults over her work in buoyancy of spirit, with
playful sunbeam and flying cloud; but the painter must go through the
same labor, or he must not have the same recreation. Let him chisel his
rock faithfully, and tuft his forest delicately, and then we will allow
him his freaks of light and shade, and thank him for them; but we will
not be put off with the play before the lesson—with the
adjunct instead of the essence—with the illustration instead of the
fact.
I am somewhat anticipating my subject here, because I can scarcely help
answering the objections which I know must arise in the minds of most
readers, especially of those who are partially § 10. Breadth is not
vacancy.artistical, respecting "generalization," "breadth," "effect,"
etc. It were to be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so
frequently on the necessity of breadth, without explaining what it
means; and that we had more constant reference made to the principle
which I can only remember having seen once clearly explained and
insisted on,—that breadth is not vacancy. Generalization is unity, not
destruction of parts; and composition is not annihilation, but
arrangement of materials. The breadth which unites the truths of nature
with her harmonies, is meritorious and beautiful; but the breadth which
annihilates those truths by the million, is not painting nature, but
painting over her. And so the masses which result from right concords
and relations of details, are sublime and impressive; but the masses
which result from the eclipse of details are contemptible and
painful.[27] And we shall show, in following parts of the work, that
distances like those of Poussin are mere meaningless tricks of clever
execution, which, when once discovered, the artist may repeat over and
over again, with mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, both
to himself and to his superficial admirers, with no more exertion of
intellect nor awakening of feeling than any tradesman has in multiplying
some ornamental pattern of furniture. Be this as it may, however, (for
we cannot enter upon the discussion of the question here,) the falsity
and imperfection of such distances admit of no dispute. Beautiful and
ideal they may be; true they are not: and in the same way we might go
through every part and portion of the works of the old masters, showing
throughout, either that you have every leaf and blade of grass staring
defiance to the mystery of nature, or that you have dead spaces of
absolute vacuity, equally determined in their denial of her
fulness. And even if we ever find (as here and there, in their better
pictures, we do) changeful passages of agreeable playing color, or
mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious atmosphere, even here
the touches, though satisfactory to the eye, are suggestive of
nothing,—they are characterless,—they have none of the peculiar
expressiveness and meaning by which nature maintains the variety and
interest even of what she most conceals. She always tells a story,
however hintedly and vaguely; each of her touches is different from all
the others; and we feel with every one, that though we cannot tell what
it is, it cannot be anything; while even the most dexterous distances
of the old masters pretend to secrecy without having anything to
conceal, and are ambiguous, not from the concentration of meaning, but
from the want of it.
And now, take up one of Turner's distances, it matters not which, or of
what kind,—drawing or painting, small or great, done thirty years ago,
or for last year's Academy, as you like; § 11. The fulness and mystery
of Turner's distances.say that of the Mercury and Argus, and look if
every fact which I have just been pointing out in nature be not carried
out in it. Abundant, beyond the power of the eye to embrace or follow,
vast and various, beyond the power of the mind to comprehend, there is
yet not one atom in its whole extent and mass which does not suggest
more than it represents; nor does it suggest vaguely, but in such a
manner as to prove that the conception of each individual inch of that
distance is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind, a
separate picture fully worked out: but yet, clearly and fully as the
idea is formed, just so much of it is given, and no more, as nature
would have allowed us to feel or see; just so much as would enable a
spectator of experience and knowledge to understand almost every minute
fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the unpractised and
careless eye, just what a distance of nature's own would appear, an
unintelligible mass. Not one line out of the millions there is without
meaning, yet there is not one which is not affected and disguised by the
dazzle and indecision of distance. No form is made out, and yet no form
is unknown.
Perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better to be
understood by observing the distant character of rich architecture, than
of any other object. Go to the top of Highgate Hill § 12. Farther
illustrations in architectural drawing.on a clear summer morning at five
o'clock, and look at Westminster Abbey. You will receive an impression
of a building enriched with multitudinous vertical lines. Try to
distinguish one of those lines all the way down from the one next to it:
You cannot. Try to count them: You cannot. Try to make out the beginning
or end of any one of them: You cannot. Look at it generally, and it is
all symmetry and arrangement. Look at in its parts, and it is all
inextricable confusion. Am not I, at this moment, describing a piece of
Turner's drawing, with the same words by which I describe nature? And
what would one of the old masters have done with such a building as this
in his distance? Either he would only have given the shadows of the
buttresses, and the light and dark sides of the two towers, and two dots
for the windows; or if more ignorant and more ambitious, he had
attempted to render some of the detail, it would have been done by
distinct lines,—would have been broad caricature of the delicate
building, felt at once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. His most
successful effort would only have given us, through his carefully toned
atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, without one line of
carving on its economic sides. Turner, and Turner only, would follow and
render on the canvas that mystery of decided line,—that distinct,
sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable richness, which,
examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but confusion and defeat,
which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.[28]
Nor is this mode of representation true only with respect to distances.
Every object, however near the eye, has something about it which you
cannot see, and which brings the mystery of § 13. In near objects as
well as distances.distance even into every part and portion of what we
suppose ourselves to see most distinctly. Stand in the Piazza di St.
Marco at Venice, as close to the church as you can, without
losing sight of the top of it. Look at the capitals of the columns on
the second story. You see that they are exquisitely rich, carved all
over. Tell me their patterns: You cannot. Tell me the direction of a
single line in them: You cannot. Yet you see a multitude of lines, and
you have so much feeling of a certain tendency and arrangement in those
lines, that you are quite sure the capitals are beautiful, and that they
are all different from each other. But § 14. Vacancy and falsehood of
Canaletto.I defy you to make out one single line in any one of them. Now
go to Canaletto's painting of this church, in the Palazzo Manfrini,
taken from the very spot on which you stood. How much has he represented
of all this? A black dot under each capital for the shadow, and a yellow
one above it for the light. There is not a vestige nor indication of
carving or decoration of any sort or kind.
Very different from this, but erring on the other side, is the ordinary
drawing of the architect, who gives the principal lines of the design
with delicate clearness and precision, but with no uncertainty or
mystery about them; which mystery being removed, all space and size are
destroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, not of a building.
But in the capital lying on the foreground in Turner's Daphne hunting
with Leucippus, we have the perfect truth. Not one jag of the acanthus
leaves is absolutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel
in an instant that all are there. And so it will invariably be found
through every portion of detail in his late and most perfect works.
But if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish merely in the more
delicate instances of architectural decoration, how much more in the
ceaseless and incomparable decoration of § 15. Still greater fulness and
finish in landscape foregrounds.nature. The detail of a single weedy
bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn. Every leaf and stalk has a
design and tracery upon it,—every knot of grass an intricacy of shade
which the labor of years could never imitate, and which, if such labor
could follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet
be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it
is not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. That which is
nearness for the bank, is distance for its details; and however near it
may be, the greater part of those details are still a
beautiful incomprehensibility.[29]
Hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space and size is
dependent upon obscurity, united with, or rather resultant from,
exceeding fulness. We destroy both space and size, § 16. Space and size
are destroyed alike by distinctness and by vacancy.either by the
vacancy, which affords us no measure of space, or by the distinctness,
which gives us a false one. The distance of Poussin, having no
indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind, may
be fifty miles off, or may be five; we cannot tell—we have no measure,
and in consequence, no vivid impression. But a middle distance of
Hobbima's involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by
perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail.
A single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the
infinity of foliage, than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered
his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday. § 17. Swift execution
best secures perfection of details.What Sir J. Reynolds says of the
misplaced labor of his Roman acquaintance on separate leaves of foliage,
and the certainty he expresses that a man who attended to general
character would in five minutes produce a more faithful representation
of a tree, than the unfortunate mechanist in as many years, is thus
perfectly true and well founded; but this is not because details are
undesirable, but because they are best given by swift execution, and
because, individually, § 18. Finish is far more necessary in landscape
than in historical subjects.they cannot be given at all. But it should
be observed (though we shall be better able to insist upon this point in
future) that much of harm and error has arisen from the supposition and
assertions of swift and brilliant historical painters, that the same
principles of execution are entirely applicable to landscape, which are
right for the figure. The artist who falls into extreme detail in
drawing the human form, is apt to become disgusting rather than
pleasing. It is more agreeable that the general outline and soft hues of
flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and lines of
intersection. And even the most rapid and generalizing expression of the
human body, if directed by perfect knowledge, and rigidly
faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little of what is agreeable
or impressive. But the exclusively generalizing landscape painter omits
the whole of what is valuable in his subject,—omits thoughts, designs,
and beauties by the million, everything, indeed, which can furnish him
with variety or expression. A distance in Lincolnshire, or in Lombardy,
might both be generalized into such blue and yellow stripes as we see in
Poussin; but whatever there is of beauty or character in either, depends
altogether on our understanding the details, and feeling the difference
between the morasses and ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of
mulberry trees of the other. And so in every part of the subject. I have
no hesitation in asserting that it is impossible to go too fine, or
think too much about details in landscape, so that they be rightly
arranged and rightly massed; but that it is equally impossible to render
anything like the fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery
and obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and in which Turner
only has followed her.
We have now rapidly glanced at such general truths of nature as can be
investigated without much knowledge of what is beautiful. Questions of
arrangement, massing, and generalization, § 19. Recapitulation of the
section.I prefer leaving untouched, until we know something about
details, and something about what is beautiful. All that is desirable,
even in these mere technical and artificial points, is based upon truths
and habits of nature; but we cannot understand those truths until we are
acquainted with the specific forms and minor details which they affect,
or out of which they arise. I shall, therefore, proceed to examine the
invaluable and essential truths of specific character and form—briefly
and imperfectly, indeed, as needs must be, but yet at length sufficient
to enable the reader to pursue, if he will, the subject for himself.
Of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. An artist
may generalize the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of bark,
and do us a kindness; but he must not generalize the details of a
champaign, in which there is a history of creation. The full discussion
of the subject belongs to a future part of our investigation.
Vide, for illustration, Fontainebleau, in the Illustrations to
Scott; Vignette at opening of Human Life, in Rogers's Poems; Venice, in
the Italy; Chateau de Blois; the Rouen, and Pont Neuf, Paris, in the
Rivers of France. The distances of all the Academy pictures of Venice,
especially the Shylock, are most instructive.
It is to be remembered, however, that these truths present
themselves in all probability under very different phases to individuals
of different powers of vision. Many artists who appear to generalize
rudely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavoring to render the
appearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. Others may be
led by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail. Works
which are painted for effect at a certain distance must be always seen
at disadvantage by those whose sight is of different range from the
painter's. Another circumstance to which I ought above to have alluded
is the scale of the picture; for there are different degrees of
generalization, and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to
every scale: the stipple of the miniature painter would be offensive on
features of the life size, and the leaves with Tintoret may articulate
on a canvas of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized by Turner
on one of four by three. Another circumstance of some importance is the
assumed distance of the foreground; many landscape painters seem to
think their nearest foreground is always equally near, whereas its
distance from the spectator varies not a little, being always at least
its own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated by figures or
any other object of known size at the nearest part of it. With Claude
almost always; with Turner often, as in the Daphne and Leucippus, this
breadth is forty or fifty yards; and as the nearest foreground object
must then be at least that distance removed, and may be much more,
it is evident that no completion of close detail is in such cases
allowable, (see here another proof of Claude's erroneous practice;) with
Titian and Tintoret, on the contrary, the foreground is rarely more than
five or six yards broad, and its objects therefore being only five or
six yards distant are entirely detailed.
None of these circumstances, however, in any wise affect the great
principle, the confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all
cases. I ought to have noted, however, that many of the pictures of
Turner in which the confused drawing has been least understood, have
been luminous twilights; and that the uncertainty of twilight is
therefore added to that of general distance. In the evenings of the
south it not unfrequently happens that objects touched with the
reflected light of the western sky, continue even for the space of half
an hour after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in color, and almost
as bright as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the
moon begins to cast a shadow: but in spite of this brilliancy of color
all the details become ghostly and ill-defined. This is a favorite
moment of Turner's, and he invariably characterizes it, not by gloom,
but by uncertainty of detail. I have never seen the effect of clear
twilight thoroughly rendered by art; that effect in which all details
are lost, while intense clearness and light are still felt in the
atmosphere, in which nothing is distinctly seen, and yet it is not
darkness, far less mist, that is the cause of concealment. Turner's
efforts at rendering this effect (as the Wilderness of Engedi, Assos,
Chateau de Blois, Caerlaverock, and others innumerable,) have always
some slight appearance of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of
details; but it remains to be shown that any closer approximation to the
effect is possible.
OF THE OPEN SKY.
It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky.
It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of
pleasing man, more for the sole and evident § 1. The peculiar adaptation
of the sky to the pleasing and teaching of man.purpose of talking to him
and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the
part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other
works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere
pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but
every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be
answered, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain
cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so
all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and
evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any
day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene,
picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such
exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is
quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual
pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources
of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest
scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended
that man should live always in the midst of them, he injures them by his
presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them; but the sky
is for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for human
nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for
the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and
purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes
capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together;
almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost
divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as
distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing § 2. The
carelessness with which its lessons are received.to what is mortal is
essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of
thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon
all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which
bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive
more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share
with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and
monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of
watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter
idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of
its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, and another it
has been windy, and another it has been warm. Who, among the whole
chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the
chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday?
Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon
their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue
rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them
last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves?
All has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken
off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is
extraordinary; and yet it § 3. The most essential of these lessons are
the gentlest.is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the
elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the
whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God
is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice.
They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can
only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and
subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the
perpetual,—that which must be sought ere it is seen, and
loved ere it is understood,—things which the angels work out for us
daily, and yet vary eternally, which are never wanting, and never
repeated, which are to be found always yet each found but once; it is
through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the
blessing of beauty given. These are what the artist of highest aim must
study; it §4. Many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional.is these,
by the combination of which his ideal is to be created; these, of which
so little notice is ordinarily taken by common observers, that I fully
believe, little as people in general are concerned with art, more of
their ideas of sky are derived from pictures than from reality, and that
if we could examine the conception formed in the minds of most educated
persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently be found composed of
fragments of blue and white reminiscences of the old masters.
I shall enter upon the examination of what is true in sky at greater
length, because it is the only part of a picture of which all, if they
will, may be competent judges. What I may have to assert respecting the
rocks of Salvator, or the boughs of Claude, I can scarcely prove, except
to those whom I can immure for a month or two in the fastnesses of the
Apennines, or guide in their summer walks again and again through the
ravines of Sorrento. But what I say of the sky can be brought to an
immediate test by all, and I write the more decisively, in the hope that
it may be so.
Let us begin then with the simple open blue of the sky. This is of
course the color of the pure atmospheric air, not the aqueous vapor, but
the pure azote and oxygen, and it is the § 5. Nature and essential
qualities of the open blue.total color of the whole mass of that air
between us and the void of space. It is modified by the varying quantity
of aqueous vapor suspended in it, whose color, in its most imperfect,
and therefore most visible, state of solution, is pure white, (as in
steam,) which receives, like any other white, the warm hues of the rays
of the sun, and, according to its quantity and imperfect solution, makes
the sky paler, and at the same time more or less gray, by mixing warm
tones with its blue. This gray aqueous vapor, when very decided, becomes
mist, and when local, cloud. Hence the sky is to be considered as a
transparent blue liquid, in which, at various elevations,
clouds are suspended, those clouds being themselves only particular
visible spaces of a substance with which the whole mass of this liquid
is more or less impregnated. § 6. Its connection with clouds.Now, we all
know this perfectly well, and yet we so far forget it in practice, that
we little notice the constant connection kept up by nature between her
blue and her clouds, and we are not offended by the constant habit of
the old masters, of considering the blue sky as totally distinct in its
nature, and far separated from the vapors which float in it. With them,
cloud is cloud, and blue is blue, and no kind of connection between them
is ever hinted at. The sky is thought of as a clear, high material dome,
the clouds as separate bodies, suspended beneath it, and in consequence,
however delicate and § 7. Its exceeding depth.exquisitely removed in
tone their skies may be, you always look at them, not through them.
Now, if there be one characteristic of the sky more valuable or
necessary to be rendered than another, it is that which Wordsworth has
given in the second book of the Excursion:—
"The chasm of sky above my head
Is Heaven's profoundest azure. No domain
For fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy,
Or to pass through;—but rather an abyss
In which the everlasting stars abide,
And whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt
The curious eye to look for them by day."
And, in his American Notes, I remember Dickens notices the same truth,
describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck, looking not at,
but through the sky. And if you look intensely at the pure blue of a
serene sky, you will see that there is a variety and fulness in its very
repose. It is not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, transparent
body of penetrable air, in which you trace or imagine short, falling
spots of deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled vestiges of dark
vapor; and § 8. These qualities are especially given by modern
masters.it is this trembling transparency which our great modern master
has especially aimed at and given. His blue is never laid on in smooth
coats, but in breaking, mingling, melting hues, a quarter of an inch of
which, cut off from all the rest of the picture, is still spacious,
still infinite and immeasurable in depth. It is a painting of the air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are
near you into those which are far off; something which has no surface,
and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or
end, into the profundity of space;—whereas, with all the old landscape
painters, except Claude, you may indeed go a long way before you come to
the sky, but you will strike hard against it at last. A perfectly
genuine and untouched § 9. And by Claude.sky of Claude is indeed most
perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air; though even with
him, I often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant air
between me and the firmament, than that the firmament itself is only
air. I do not mean, however, to say a word against such skies as that of
the Enchanted Castle, or that marked 30 in the National Gallery, or one
or two which I remember at Rome; but how little and by how few these
fine passages of Claude are appreciated, is sufficiently proved by the
sufferance of such villainous and unpalliated copies as we meet with all
over Europe, like the Marriage of Isaac, in our own Gallery, to remain
under his name. In fact, I do not remember above ten pictures of
Claude's, in which the skies, whether repainted or altogether copies, or
perhaps from Claude's hand, but carelessly laid in, like that marked
241, Dulwich Gallery, were not fully as feelingless and false as those
of other masters; while, with the Poussins, there are no favorable
exceptions. Their skies are systematically wrong; take, for instance,
the sky of the Sacrifice of Isaac. It is here high noon, as is shown by
the shadow of the figures; and what sort of color is the sky § 10. Total
absence of them in Poussin. Physical errors in his general treatment of
open sky.at the top of the picture? Is it pale and gray with heat, full
of sunshine, and unfathomable in depth? On the contrary, it is of a
pitch of darkness which, except on the Mont Blanc or Chimborazo, is as
purely impossible as color can be. He might as well have painted it coal
black; and it is laid on with a dead coat of flat paint, having no one
quality or resemblance of sky about it. It cannot have altered, because
the land horizon is as delicate and tender in tone as possible, and is
evidently unchanged; and to complete the absurdity of the whole thing,
this color holds its own, without graduation or alteration, to within
three or four degrees of the horizon, where it suddenly
becomes bold and unmixed yellow. Now the horizon at noon may be yellow
when the whole sky is covered with dark clouds, and only one open
streak of light left in the distance from which the whole light
proceeds; but with a clear, open sky, and opposite the sun, at noon,
such a yellow horizon as this is physically impossible. Even supposing
that the upper part of the sky were pale and warm, and that the
transition from the one hue to the other were effected imperceptibly and
gradually, as is invariably the case in reality, instead of taking place
within a space of two or three degrees;—even then, this gold yellow
would be altogether absurd; but as it is, we have in this sky (and it is
a fine picture—one of the best of Gaspar's that I know,) a notable
example of the truth of the old masters—two impossible colors
impossibly united! Find such a color in Turner's noonday zenith as the
blue at the top, or such a color at a noonday horizon as the yellow at
the bottom, or such a connection of any colors whatsoever as that in the
centre, and then you may talk about his being false to nature if you
will. Nor is this a solitary instance; it is Gaspar Poussin's favorite
and characteristic effect. I remember twenty such, most of them worse
than this, in the downright surface and opacity of § 11. Errors of Cuyp
in graduation of color.blue. Again, look at the large Cuyp in the
Dulwich Gallery, which Mr. Hazlitt considers the "finest in the world,"
and of which he very complimentarily says, "The tender green of the
valleys, the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an
effect like the down on an unripe nectarine!" I ought to have
apologized before now, for not having studied sufficiently in Covent
Garden to be provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. One
of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that Claude was
"pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was
"juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that Cuyp is "downy." Now I
dare say that the sky of this first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe
nectarine: all that I have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly
unlike a sky. The blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over
three-fourths of it, down to the horizon; while the sun, in the
left-hand corner, is surrounded with a halo, first of yellow, and then
of crude pink, both being separated from each other, and the
last from the blue, as sharply as the belts of a rainbow, and both
together not ascending ten degrees in the sky. Now it is difficult to
conceive how any man calling himself a painter could impose such a thing
on the public, and still more how the public can receive it, as a
representation of that sunset purple which invariably extends its
influence to the zenith, so that there is no pure blue anywhere, but a
purple increasing in purity gradually down to its point of greatest
intensity, (about forty-five degrees from the horizon,) and then melting
imperceptibly into the gold, the three colors extending their influence
over the whole sky; so that throughout the whole sweep of the heaven,
there is no one spot where the color is not in an equal state of
transition—passing from gold into orange, from that into rose, from
that into purple, from that into blue, with absolute equality of change,
so that in no place can it be said, "here it changes," and in no place,
"here it is unchanging." This is invariably the case. There is no such
thing—there never was, and never will be such a thing, while God's
heaven remains as it is made—as a serene, sunset sky, with its purple
and rose in belts about the sun.
Such bold, broad examples of ignorance as these would soon set aside all
the claims of the professed landscape painters to truth, with whatever
delicacy of color or manipulation they may § 12. The exceeding value of
the skies of the early Italian and Dutch schools. Their qualities are
unattainable in modern times.be disguised. But there are some skies, of
the Dutch school, in which clearness and coolness have been aimed at,
instead of depth; and some introduced merely as backgrounds to the
historical subjects of the older Italians, which there is no matching in
modern times; one would think angels had painted them, for all is now
clay and oil in comparison. It seems as if we had totally lost the art,
for surely otherwise, however little our painters might aim at it or
feel it, they would touch the chord sometimes by accident; but they
never do, and the mechanical incapacity is still more strongly evidenced
by the muddy struggles of the unhappy Germans, who have the feeling,
partially strained, artificial, and diseased, indeed, but still genuine
enough to bring out the tone, if they had the mechanical means and
technical knowledge. But, however they were obtained, the clear tones of
this kind of the older Italians are glorious and enviable in
the highest degree; and we shall show, when we come to speak of the
beautiful, that they are one of the most just grounds of the fame of the
old masters.
But there is a series of phenomena connected with the open blue of the
sky, which we must take especial notice of, as it is § 13. Phenomena of
visible sunbeams. Their nature and cause.of constant occurrence in the
works of Turner and Claude, the effects, namely, of visible sunbeams. It
will be necessary for us thoroughly to understand the circumstances
under which such effects take place.
Aqueous vapor or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible
exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows you not only
cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can see other
objects through the dust without obscurity, the air being thus actually
rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light. Where a sunbeam
enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a palpable
interruption to the sight, so that a transverse sunbeam is a real
obstacle to the vision, you cannot see things clearly through it.
In the same way, wherever vapor is illuminated by transverse rays, there
it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the purity of
the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the degree of
illumination. But where vapor is in shade, it has very little effect on
the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and grayer than it otherwise
would be, but not itself, unless very dense, distinguishable or felt as
mist.
The appearance of mist or whiteness in the blue of the sky, is thus a
circumstance which more or less accompanies sunshine, § 14. They are
only illuminated mist, and cannot appear when the sky is free from
vapor, nor when it is without clouds.and which, supposing the quantity
of vapor constant, is greatest in the brightest sunlight. When there are
no clouds in the sky, the whiteness, as it affects the whole sky
equally, is not particularly noticeable. But when there are clouds
between us and the sun, the sun being low, those clouds cast shadows
along and through the mass of suspended vapor. Within the space of these
shadows, the vapor, as above stated, becomes transparent and invisible,
and the sky appears of a pure blue. But where the sunbeams strike, the
vapor becomes visible in the form of the beams, occasioning those
radiating shafts of light which are one of the most valuable and
constant accompaniments of a low sun. The denser the mist,
the more distinct and sharp-edged will these rays be; when the air is
very clear, they are mere vague, flushing, gradated passages of light;
when it is very thick, they are keen-edged and decisive in a high
degree.
We see then, first, that a quantity of mist dispersed through the whole
space of the sky, is necessary to this phenomenon; and secondly, that
what we usually think of as beams of greater brightness than the rest of
the sky, are in reality only a part of that sky in its natural state of
illumination, cut off and rendered brilliant by the shadows from the
clouds,—that these shadows are in reality the source of the appearance
of beams,—that, therefore, no part of the sky can present such an
appearance, except when there are broken clouds between it and the sun;
and lastly, that the shadows cast from such clouds are not necessarily
gray or dark, but very nearly of the natural pure blue of a sky
destitute of vapor.
Now, as it has been proved that the appearance of beams can only take
place in a part of the sky which has clouds between it § 15. Erroneous
tendency in the representation of such phenomena by the old masters.and
the sun, it is evident that no appearance of beams can ever begin from
the orb itself, except when there is a cloud or solid body of some kind
between us and it; but that such appearances will almost invariably
begin on the dark side of some of the clouds around it, the orb itself
remaining the centre of a broad blaze of united light. Wordsworth has
given us in two lines, the only circumstances under which rays can ever
appear to have origin in the orb itself:—
"But rays of light,
Now suddenly diverging from the orb,
Retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled
By the dense air, shot upwards."
Excursion, Book IX.
And Turner has given us the effect magnificently in the Dartmouth of the
River Scenery. It is frequent among the old masters, and constant in
Claude; though the latter, from drawing his beams too fine, represents
the effect upon the dazzled eye rather than the light which actually
exists, and approximates very closely to the ideal which we see in the
sign of the Rising Sun; nay, I am nearly sure that I
remember cases in which he has given us the diverging beam, without any
cloud or hill interfering § 16. The ray which appears in the dazzled eye
should not be represented.with the orb. It may, perhaps, be somewhat
difficult to say how far it is allowable to represent that kind of ray
which is seen by the dazzled eye. It is very certain that we never look
towards a bright sun without seeing glancing rays issue from it; but it
is equally certain that those rays are no more real existences than the
red and blue circles which we see after having been so dazzled, and that
if we are to represent the rays we ought also to cover our sky with pink
and blue circles. I should on the whole consider it utterly false in
principle to represent the visionary beam, and that we ought only to
show § 17. The practice of Turner. His keen perception of the more
delicate phenomena of rays.that which has actual existence. Such we find
to be the constant practice of Turner. Even where, owing to interposed
clouds, he has beams appearing to issue from the orb itself, they are
broad bursts of light, not spiky rays; and his more usual practice is to
keep all near the sun in one simple blaze of intense light, and from the
first clouds to throw beams to the zenith, though he often does not
permit any appearance of rays until close to the zenith itself. Open at
the 80th page of the Illustrated edition of Rogers's poems. You have
there a sky blazing with sunbeams; but they all begin a long way from
the sun, and they are accounted for by a mass of dense clouds
surrounding the orb itself. Turn to the 7th page. Behind the old oak,
where the sun is supposed to be, you have only a blaze of
undistinguished light; but up on the left, over the edge of the cloud,
on its dark side, the sunbeam. Turn to page 192,—blazing rays again,
but all beginning where the clouds do, not one can you trace to the sun;
and observe how carefully the long shadow on § 18. The total absence of
any evidence of such perception in the works of the old masters.the
mountain is accounted for by the dim dark promontory projecting out near
the sun. I need not multiply examples; you will find various
modifications and uses of these effects throughout his works. But you
will not find a single trace of them in the old masters. They give you
the rays issuing from behind black clouds, and because they are a coarse
and common effect which could not possibly escape their observation, and
because they are easily imitated. They give you the spiky
shafts issuing from the orb itself, because these are partially
symbolical of light, and assist a tardy imagination, as two or three
rays scratched round the sun with a pen would, though they would be rays
of darkness instead of light.[30] But of the most beautiful phenomenon
of all, the appearance of the delicate ray far in the sky, threading its
way among the thin, transparent clouds, while all around the sun is
unshadowed fire, there is no record nor example whatsoever in their
works. It was too delicate and spiritual for them; probably their blunt
and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature, and their untaught
imaginations were not likely to originate it in the study.
Little is to be said of the skies of our other landscape artists. In
paintings, they are commonly toneless, crude, and wanting in depth and
transparency; but in drawings, some very § 19. Truth of the skies of
modern drawings.perfect and delicate examples have been produced by
various members of the old water color Society, and one or two others;
but with respect to the qualities of which we are at present speaking,
it is not right to compare drawings with paintings, as the wash or
spunging, or other artifices peculiar to water color, are capable of
producing an appearance of quality which it needs much higher art to
produce in oils.
Taken generally, the open skies of the moderns are inferior in quality
to picked and untouched skies of the greatest of the
ancients, but far superior to the average class of pictures which § 20.
Recapitulation. The best skies of the ancients are, in quality,
inimitable, but in rendering of various truth, childish.we have every
day fathered upon their reputation. Nine or ten skies of Claude might be
named which are not to be contended with, in their way, and as many of
Cuyp. Teniers has given some very wonderful passages, and the clearness
of the early Italian and Dutch schools is beyond all imitation. But the
common blue daubing which we hear every day in our best galleries
attributed to Claude and Cuyp, and the genuine skies of Salvator, and of
both the Poussins, are not to be compared for an instant with the best
works of modern times, even in quality and transparency; while in all
matters requiring delicate observation or accurate science,—in all
which was not attainable by technicalities of art, and which depended
upon the artist's knowledge and understanding of nature, all the works
of the ancients are alike the productions of mere children, sometimes
manifesting great sensibility, but proving at the same time, feebly
developed intelligence and ill-regulated observation.
I have left this passage as it stood originally, because it is
right as far as it goes; yet it speaks with too little respect of
symbolism, which is often of the highest use in religious art, and in
some measure is allowable in all art. In the works of almost all the
greatest masters there are portions which are explanatory rather than
representative, and typical rather than imitative; nor could these be
parted with but at infinite loss. Note, with respect to the present
question, the daring black sunbeams of Titian, in his woodcut of St.
Francis receiving the stigmata, and compare here Part III. Sect. II.
Chap. IV. § 18; Chap. V. § 13. And though I believe that I am right in
considering all such symbolism as out of place in pure landscape, and in
attributing that of Claude to ignorance or inability, and not to
feeling, yet I praise Turner not so much for his absolute refusal to
represent the spiky ray about the sun, as for his perceiving and
rendering that which Claude never perceived, the multitudinous presence
of radiating light in the upper sky and on all its countless ranks of
subtile cloud.
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS:—FIRST, OF THE REGION OF THE CIRRUS.
Our next subject of investigation must be the specific character of
clouds, a species of truth which is especially neglected by artists;
first, because as it is within the limits of possibility § 1. Difficulty
of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds consists.that a cloud may
assume almost any form, it is difficult to point out and not always easy
to feel, where in error consists; and secondly, because it is totally
impossible to study the forms of clouds from nature with care and
accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between every touch of
the following pencil, and parts of an outline sketched at different
instants cannot harmonize, nature never having intended them to come
together. Still if artists were more in the habit of sketching clouds
rapidly, and as accurately as possible in the outline, from nature,
instead of daubing down what they call "effects" with the brush, they
would soon find there is more beauty about their forms than can be
arrived at by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, and
more essential character than can be violated without incurring the
charge of falsehood,—falsehood as direct and definite, though not as
traceable as error in the less varied features of organic form.
The first and most important character of clouds, is dependent on the
different altitudes at which they are formed. The atmosphere may be
conveniently considered as divided into § 2. Variation of their
character at different elevations. The three regions to which they may
conveniently be considered as belonging.three spaces, each inhabited by
clouds of specific character altogether different, though, in reality
there is no distinct limit fixed between them by nature, clouds being
formed at every altitude, and partaking according to their altitude,
more or less of the characters of the upper or lower regions. The
scenery of the sky is thus formed of an infinitely graduated series of
systematic forms of cloud, each of which has its own region
in which alone it is formed, and each of which has specific characters
which can only be properly determined by comparing them as they are
found clearly distinguished by intervals of considerable space. I shall
therefore consider the sky as divided into three regions—the upper
region, or region of the cirrus; the central region, or region of the
stratus; the lower region, or the region of the rain-cloud.
The clouds which I wish to consider as included in the upper region,
never touch even the highest mountains of Europe, and § 3. Extent of the
upper region.may therefore be looked upon as never formed below an of at
least 15,000 feet; they are the motionless multitudinous lines of
delicate vapor with which the blue of the open sky is commonly streaked
or speckled after several days of fine weather. I must be pardoned for
giving a detailed description of their specific characters as they are
of constant occurrence in the works of modern artists, and I shall have
occasion to speak frequently of them in future parts § 4. The
symmetrical arrangement of its clouds.of the work. Their chief
characters are—first, Symmetry: They are nearly always arranged in some
definite and evident order, commonly in long ranks reaching sometimes
from the zenith to the horizon, each rank composed of an infinite number
of transverse bars of about the same length, each bar thickest in the
middle, and terminating in a traceless vaporous point at each side; the
ranks are in the direction of the wind, and the bars of course at right
angles to it; these latter are commonly slightly bent in the middle.
Frequently two systems of this kind, indicative of two currents of wind,
at different altitudes intersect one another, forming a network. Another
frequent arrangement is in groups of excessively fine, silky, parallel
fibres, commonly radiating, or having a tendency to radiate, from one of
their extremities, and terminating in a plumy sweep at the other:—these
are vulgarly known as "mares' tails." The plumy and expanded extremity
of these is often bent upwards, sometimes back and up again, giving an
appearance of great flexibility and unity at the same time, as if the
clouds were tough, and would hold together however bent. The narrow
extremity is invariably turned to the wind, and the fibres are parallel
with its direction. The upper clouds always fall into some modification
of one or other of these arrangements. They thus differ from
all other clouds, in having a plan and system; whereas other clouds,
though there are certain laws which they cannot break, have yet perfect
freedom from anything like a relative and general system of government.
The upper clouds are to the lower, what soldiers on parade are to a
mixed multitude; no men walk on their heads or their hands, and so there
are certain laws which no clouds violate; but there is nothing except in
the upper clouds resembling symmetrical discipline.
Secondly, Sharpness of Edge: The edges of the bars of the upper clouds
which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest which the sky
shows; no outline whatever of any other kind § 5. Their exceeding
delicacy.of cloud, however marked and energetic, ever approaches the
delicate decision of these edges. The outline of a black thunder-cloud
is striking, from the great energy of the color or shade of the general
mass; but as a line, it is soft and indistinct, compared with the edge
of the cirrus, in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. On the other hand,
the edge of the bar turned away from the wind is always soft, often
imperceptible, melting into the blue interstice between it and its next
neighbor. Commonly the sharper one edge is, the softer is the other, and
the clouds look flat, and as if they slipped over each other like the
scales of a fish. When both edges are soft, as is always the case when
the sky is clear and windless, the cloud looks solid, round, and fleecy.
Thirdly, Multitude: The delicacy of these vapors is sometimes carried
into such an infinity of division, that no other sensation of number
that the earth or heaven can give is so § 6. Their number.impressive.
Number is always most felt when it is symmetrical, (vide Burke on
"Sublime," Part ii. sect. 8,) and, therefore, no sea-waves nor fresh
leaves make their number so evident or so impressive as these vapors.
Nor is nature content with an infinity of bars or lines alone—each bar
is in its turn severed into a number of small undulatory masses, more or
less connected according to the violence of the wind. When this division
is merely effected by undulation, the cloud exactly resembles sea-sand
ribbed by the tide; but when the division amounts to real separation we
have the mottled or mackerel skies. Commonly, the greater the division
of its bars, the broader and more shapeless is the rank or
field, so that in the mottled sky it is lost altogether, and we have
large irregular fields of equal size, masses like flocks of sheep; such
clouds are three or four thousand feet below the legitimate cirrus. I
have seen them cast a shadow on the Mont Blanc at sunset, so that they
must descend nearly to within fifteen thousand feet of the earth.
Fourthly, Purity of Color: The nearest of these clouds—those over the
observer's head, being at least three miles above § 7. Causes of their
peculiarly delicate coloring.him, and nearly all entering the ordinary
sphere of vision, farther from him still,—their dark sides are much
grayer and cooler than those of other clouds, owing to their distance.
They are composed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all foulness of
earthy gases, and of this in the lightest and most ethereal state in
which it can be, to be visible. Farther, they receive the light of the
sun in a state of far greater intensity than lower objects, the beams
being transmitted to them through atmospheric air far less dense, and
wholly unaffected by mist, smoke, or any other impurity. Hence their
colors are more pure and vivid, and their white less sullied than those
of any other clouds.
Lastly, Variety: Variety is never so conspicuous, as when it is united
with symmetry. The perpetual change of form in § 8. Their variety of
form.other clouds, is monotonous in its very dissimilarity, nor is
difference striking where no connection is implied; but if through a
range of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all governed by the
same forces and falling into one general form, there be yet a marked and
evident dissimilarity between each member of the great mass—one more
finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next more gracefully
bent—each broken into differently modelled and variously numbered
groups, the variety is doubly striking, because contrasted with the
perfect symmetry of which it forms a part. Hence, the importance of the
truth, that nature never lets one of the members of even her most
disciplined groups of cloud be like another; but though each is adapted
for the same function, and in its great features resembles all the
others, not one, out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, is
without a separate beauty and character, appearing to have had distinct thought occupied in its conception, and distinct forces in
its production; and in addition to this perpetual invention, visible in
each member of each system, we find systems of separate cloud
intersecting one another, the sweeping lines mingled and interwoven with
the rigid bars, these in their turn melting into banks of sand-like
ripple and flakes of drifted and irregular foam; under all, perhaps the
massy outline of some lower cloud moves heavily across the motionless
buoyancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their elevation and
their repose.
Such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region; whether they
are beautiful, valuable, or impressive, it is not our present business
to decide, nor to endeavor to discover the reason § 9. Total absence of
even the slightest effort at their representation, in ancient
landscape.of the somewhat remarkable fact, that the whole field of
ancient landscape art affords, as far as we remember, but one instance
of any effort whatever to represent the character of this cloud region.
That one instance is the landscape of Rubens in our own gallery, in
which the mottled or fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and
exquisite beauty. To this should perhaps be added, some of the
backgrounds of the historical painters, where horizontal lines were
required, and a few level bars of white or warm color cross the serenity
of the blue. These, as far as they go, are often very perfect, and the
elevation and repose of their effect might, we should have thought, have
pointed out to the landscape painters that there was something (I do not
say much, but certainly something) to be made out of the high clouds.
Not one of them, however, took the hint. To whom, among them all, can we
look for the slightest realization of the fine and faithful descriptive
passage of the "Excursion," already alluded to:—
"But rays of light,
Now suddenly diverging from the orb,
Retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled
By the dense air, shot upwards to the crown
Of the blue firmament—aloft—and wide:
And multitudes of little floating clouds,
Ere we, who saw, of change were conscious, pierced
Through their ethereal texture, had become
Vivid as fire,—Clouds separately poised,
Innumerable multitude of forms
Scattered through half the circle of the sky;
And giving back, and shedding each on each,
With prodigal communion, the bright hues
Which from the unapparent fount of glory
They had imbibed, and ceased not to receive.
That which the heavens displayed the liquid deep
Repeated, but with unity sublime."
There is but one master whose works we can think of while we read this;
one alone has taken notice of the neglected upper § 10. The intense and
constant study of them by Turner.sky; it is his peculiar and favorite
field; he has watched its every modification, and given its every phase
and feature; at all hours, in all seasons, he has followed its passions
and its changes, and has brought down and laid open to the world another
apocalypse of heaven.
There is scarcely a painting of Turner's, in which serenity of sky and
intensity of light are aimed at together, in which these clouds are not
used, though there are not two cases in which they are used altogether
alike. Sometimes they are crowded together in masses of mingling light,
as in the Shylock; every part and atom sympathizing in that continuous
expression of slow movement which Shelley has so beautifully touched:—
"Underneath the young gray dawn
A multitude of dense, white fleecy clouds,
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind."
At other times they are blended with the sky itself, felt only here and
there by a ray of light calling them into existence out of its misty
shade, as in the Mercury and Argus; sometimes, where great repose is to
be given, they appear in a few detached, equal, rounded flakes, which
seem to hang motionless, each like the shadow of the other, in the deep
blue of the zenith, as in the Acro-Corinth; sometimes they are scattered
in fiery flying fragments, each burning with separate energy, as in the
Temeraire; sometimes woven together with fine threads of intermediate
darkness, melting into the blue as in the Napoleon. But in all cases the
exquisite manipulation of the master gives to each atom of the multitude
its own character and expression. Though they be countless
as leaves, each has its portion of light, its shadow, its reflex, its
peculiar and separating form.
Take for instance the illustrated edition of Rogers's Poems,[31] and
open it at the 80th page, and observe how every attribute which I have
pointed out in the upper sky, is there rendered § 11. His vignette,
Sunrise on the Sea.with the faithfulness of a mirror; the long lines of
parallel bars, the delicate curvature from the wind, which the
inclination of the sail shows you to be from the west; the excessive
sharpness of every edge which is turned to the wind, the faintness of
every opposite one, the breaking up of each bar into rounded masses, and
finally, the inconceivable variety with which individual form has been
given to every member of the multitude, and not only individual form,
but roundness and substance even where there is scarcely a hairbreadth
of cloud to express it in. Observe, above everything, the varying
indication of space and depth in the whole, so that you may look through
and through from one cloud to another, feeling not merely how they
retire to the horizon, but how they melt back into the recesses of the
sky; every interval being filled with absolute air, and all its spaces
so melting and fluctuating, and fraught with change as with repose, that
as you look, you will fancy that the rays shoot higher and higher into
the vault of light, and that the pale streak of horizontal vapor is
melting away from the cloud that it crosses. Now watch for the next
barred sunrise, and take this vignette to the window, and test it by
nature's own clouds, among which you will find forms and passages, I do
not say merely like, but apparently the actual originals of parts of
this very drawing. And with whom will you do this, except with Turner?
Will you do it with Claude, and set that blank square yard of blue, with
its round, white, flat fixtures of similar cloud, beside the purple
infinity of nature, with her countless multitude of shadowy lines, and
flaky waves, and folded veils of variable mist? Will you do it with
Poussin, and set those massy steps of unyielding solidity,
with the chariot-and-four driving up them, by the side of the delicate
forms which terminate in threads too fine for the eye to follow them,
and of texture so thin woven that the earliest stars shine through them?
Will you do it with Salvator, and set that volume of violent and
restless manufactory smoke beside those calm and quiet bars, which pause
in the heaven as if they would never leave it more?
Now we have just seen how Turner uses the sharp-edged cirri when he aims
at giving great transparency of air. But it was shown in the preceding
chapter that sunbeams, or the appearance § 12. His use of the cirrus in
expressing mist.of them, are always sharper in their edge in proportion
as the air is more misty, as they are most defined in a room where there
is most dust flying about in it. Consequently, in the vignette we have
been just noticing, where transparency is to be given, though there is a
blaze of light, its beams are never edged; a tendency to rays is
visible, but you cannot in any part find a single marked edge of a
rising sunbeam, the sky is merely more flushed in one place than
another. Now let us see what Turner does when he wants mist. Turn to the
Alps at Daybreak, page 193, in the same book. Here we have the cirri
used again, but now they have no sharp edges, they are all fleecy and
mingling with each other, though every one of them has the most
exquisite indication of individual form, and they melt back, not till
they are lost in exceeding light, as in the other plate, but into a
mysterious, fluctuating, shadowy sky, of which, though the light
penetrates through it all, you perceive every part to be charged with
vapor. Notice particularly the half-indicated forms even where it is
most serene, behind the snowy mountains. And now, how are the sunbeams
drawn? no longer indecisive, flushing, palpitating, every one is sharp
and clear, and terminated by definite shadow; note especially the marked
lines on the upper cloud; finally, observe the difference in the mode of
indicating the figures, which are here misty and indistinguishable,
telling only as shadows, though they are near and large, while those in
the former vignette came clear upon the eye, though they were so far off
as to appear mere points.
Now is this perpetual consistency in all points, this concentration of
every fact which can possibly bear upon what we are to be
told, this watchfulness of the entire meaning and system § 13. His
consistency in every minor feature.of nature, which fills every part and
space of the picture with coincidences of witness, which come out upon
us, as they would from the reality, more fully and deeply in proportion
to the knowledge we possess and the attention we give, admirable or not?
I could go on writing page after page on every sky of Turner's, and
pointing out fresh truths in every one. In the Havre, for instance, of
the Rivers of France we have a new fact pointed out to us with respect
to these cirri, namely, their being so faint and transparent as not to
be distinguishable from the blue of the sky, (a frequent case,) except
in the course of a sunbeam, which, however, does not illumine their
edges, they being not solid enough to reflect light, but penetrates
their whole substance, and renders them flat, luminous forms in its
path, instantly and totally lost at its edge. And thus a separate essay
would be required by every picture, to make fully understood the new
phenomena which it treated and illustrated. But after once showing what
are the prevailing characteristics of these clouds, we can only leave it
to the reader to trace them wherever they occur. There are some fine and
characteristic passages of this kind of cloud given by Stanfield, though
he dares not use them in multitude, and is wanting in those refined
qualities of form which it is totally impossible to explain in words,
but which, perhaps, by simple outlines, on a large scale, selected from
the cloud forms of various artists, I may in following portions of the
work illustrate with the pencil.
Of the colors of these clouds I have spoken before, (Sec. I. Chap. II.;)
but though I then alluded to their purity and vividness, I scarcely took
proper notice of their variety; there is § 14. The color of the upper
clouds.indeed in nature variety in all things, and it would be absurd to
insist on it in each case, yet the colors of these clouds are so
marvellous in their changefulness, that they require particular notice.
If you watch for the next sunset, when there are a considerable number
of these cirri in the sky, you will see, especially at the zenith, that
the sky does not remain of the same color for two inches together; one
cloud has a dark side of cold blue, and a fringe of milky white;
another, above it, has a dark side of purple and an edge of red; another, nearer the sun, has an under-side of orange and an edge of
gold; these you will find mingled with, and passing into the blue of the
sky, which in places you will not be able to distinguish from the cool
gray of the darker clouds, and which will be itself full of gradation,
now pure and deep, now faint and feeble; and all this is done, not in
large pieces, nor on a large scale, but over and over again in every
square yard, so that there is no single part nor portion of the whole
sky which has not in itself variety of color enough for a separate
picture, and yet no single part which is like another, or which has not
some peculiar source of beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of color
of its own. Now, instead of this, you get in the old masters—Cuyp, or
Claude, or whoever they may be—a field of blue, delicately,
beautifully, and uniformly shaded down to the yellow sun, with a certain
number of similar clouds, each with a dark side of the same gray, and an
edge of the same yellow. I do not say that nature never does anything
like this, but I say that her principle is to do a great deal more,
and that what she does more than this,—what I have above described, and
what you may see in nine sunsets out of ten,—has been observed,
attempted, and rendered by Turner only, and by him with a fidelity and
force which presents us with more essential truth, and more clear
expression and illustration of natural laws, in every wreath of vapor,
than composed the whole stock of heavenly information, which lasted Cuyp
and Claude their lives.
We close then our present consideration of the upper clouds, to return
to them when we know what is beautiful; we have at present only to
remember that of these clouds, and the truths § 15.
Recapitulation.connected with them, none before Turner had taken any
notice whatsoever; that had they therefore been even feebly and
imperfectly represented by him, they would yet have given him a claim to
be considered more extended and universal in his statement of truths
than any of his predecessors; how much more when we find that deep
fidelity in his studied and perfect skies which opens new sources of
delight to every advancement of our knowledge, and to every added moment
of our contemplation.
I use this work frequently for illustration, because it is the only
one I know in which the engraver has worked with delicacy enough to give
the real forms and touches of Turner. I can reason from these plates,
(in questions of form only,) nearly as well as I could from the
drawings.
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS:—SECONDLY, OF THE CENTRAL CLOUD
REGION.
We have next to investigate the character of the Central Cloud Region,
which I consider as including all clouds which are the usual
characteristic of ordinary serene weather, and § 1. Extent and typical
character of the central cloud region.which touch and envelop the
mountains of Switzerland, but never affect those of our own island; they
may therefore be considered as occupying a space of air ten thousand
feet in height, extending from five to fifteen thousand feet above the
sea.
These clouds, according to their elevation, appear with great variety of
form, often partaking of the streaked or mottled character of the higher
region, and as often, when the precursors of storm, manifesting forms
closely connected with the lowest rain clouds; but the species
especially characteristic of the central region is a white, ragged,
irregular, and scattered vapor, which has little form and less color,
and of which a good example may be seen in the largest landscape of
Cuyp, in the Dulwich Gallery. When this vapor collects into masses, it
is partially rounded, clumsy, and ponderous, as if it would tumble out
of the sky, shaded with a dull gray, and totally devoid of any
appearance of energy or motion. Even in nature, these clouds are
comparatively uninteresting, scarcely worth raising § 2. Its
characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor thought for their
representation, are therefore favorite subjects with the old masters.our
heads to look at; and on canvas, valuable only as a means of introducing
light, and breaking the monotony of blue; yet they are, perhaps, beyond
all others the favorite clouds of the Dutch masters. Whether they had
any motive for the adoption of such materials, beyond the extreme
facility with which acres of canvas might thus be covered without any
troublesome exertion of thought; or any temptation to such selections
beyond the impossibility of error where nature shows no
form, and the impossibility of deficiency where she shows no beauty, it
is not here the place to determine. Such skies are happily beyond the
reach of criticism, for he who tells you nothing cannot tell you a
falsehood. A little flake-white, glazed with a light brush over the
carefully toned blue, permitted to fall into whatever forms chance might
determine, with the single precaution that their edges should be
tolerably irregular, supplied, in hundreds of instances, a sky quite
good enough for all ordinary purposes—quite good enough for cattle to
graze, or boors to play at nine-pins under—and equally devoid of all
that could gratify, inform, or offend.
But although this kind of cloud is, as I have said, typical of the
central region, it is not one which nature is fond of. § 3. The clouds
of Salvator and Poussin.She scarcely ever lets an hour pass without some
manifestation of finer forms, sometimes approaching the upper cirri,
sometimes the lower cumulus. And then in the lower outlines, we have the
nearest approximation which nature ever presents to the clouds of
Claude, Salvator, and Poussin, to the characters of which I must request
especial attention, as it is here only that we shall have a fair
opportunity of comparing their skies with those of the modern school. I
shall, as before, glance rapidly at the great laws of specific form, and
so put it in the power of the reader to judge for himself of the truth
of representation.
Clouds, it is to be remembered, are not so much local vapor, as vapor
rendered locally visible by a fall of temperature. Thus § 4. Their
essential characters.a cloud, whose parts are in constant motion, will
hover on a snowy mountain, pursuing constantly the same track upon its
flanks, and yet remaining of the same size, the same form, and in the
same place, for half a day together. No matter how violent or how
capricious the wind may be, the instant it approaches the spot where the
chilly influence of the snow extends, the moisture it carries becomes
visible, and then and there the cloud forms on the instant, apparently
maintaining its form against the wind, though the careful and keen eye
can see all its parts in the most rapid motion across the mountain. The
outlines of such a cloud are of course not determined by the irregular
impulses of the wind, but by the fixed lines of radiant heat which
regulate the temperature of the atmosphere of the mountain.
It is terminated, therefore, not by changing curves, but by steady right
lines of more or less decision, often exactly correspondent with the
outline of the mountain on which it is formed, and falling therefore
into grotesque peaks and precipices. I have seen the marked and angular
outline of the Grandes Jorasses, at Chamounix, mimicked in its every jag
by a line of clouds above it. Another resultant phenomenon is the
formation of cloud in the calm air to leeward of a steep summit; cloud
whose edges are in rapid motion, where they are affected by the current
of the wind above, and stream from the peak like the smoke of a volcano,
yet always vanish at a certain distance from it as steam issuing from a
chimney. When wet weather of some duration is approaching, a small white
spot of cloud will sometimes appear low on the hill flanks; it will not
move, but will increase gradually for some little time, then diminish,
still without moving; disappear altogether, reappear ten minutes
afterwards, exactly in the same spot; increase to a greater extent than
before, again disappear, again return, and at last permanently; other
similar spots of cloud forming simultaneously, with various
fluctuations, each in its own spot, and at the same level on the
hill-side, until all expand, join together, and form an unbroken veil of
threatening gray, which darkens gradually into storm. What in such cases
takes place palpably and remarkably, is more or less a law of formation
in all clouds whatsoever; they being bounded rather by lines expressive
of changes of temperature in the atmosphere, than by the impulses of the
currents of wind in which those changes take place. Even when in rapid
and visible motion across the sky, the variations which take place in
their outlines are not so much alterations of position and arrangement
of parts, as they are the alternate formation and disappearance of
parts. There is, therefore, usually a parallelism and consistency in
their great § 5. Their angular forms and general decision of
outline.outlines, which give system to the smaller curves of which they
are composed; and if these great lines be taken, rejecting the minutiæ
of variation, the resultant form will almost always be angular, and full
of character and decision. In the flock-like fields of equal masses,
each individual mass has the effect, not of an ellipse or circle, but of a rhomboid; the sky is crossed and checkered, not
honeycombed; in the lower cumuli, even though the most rounded of all
clouds, the groups are not like balloons or bubbles, but like towers or
mountains. And the result of this arrangement in masses more or less
angular, varied with, and chiefly constructed of, curves of the utmost
freedom and beauty, is that appearance of exhaustless and fantastic
energy which gives every cloud a marked character of its own, suggesting
resemblances to the specific outlines of organic objects. I do not say
that such accidental resemblances are a character to be imitated; but
merely that they bear witness to the originality and vigor of separate
conception in cloud forms, which give to the scenery of the sky a force
and variety no less delightful than that of the changes of mountain
outline in a hill district of great elevation; and that there is added
to this a spirit-like feeling, a capricious, mocking imagery of passion
and life, totally different from any effects of inanimate form that the
earth can show.
The minor contours, out of which the larger outlines are composed, are
indeed beautifully curvilinear; but they are never monotonous in their
curves. First comes a concave line, then § 6. The composition of their
minor curves.a convex one, then an angular jag, breaking off into spray,
then a downright straight line, then a curve again, then a deep gap, and
a place where all is lost and melted away, and so on; displaying in
every inch of the form renewed and ceaseless invention, setting off
grace with rigidity, and relieving flexibility with force, in a manner
scarcely less admirable, and far more changeful than even in the
muscular forms of the human frame. Nay, such is the exquisite
composition of all this, that you may take any single fragment of any
cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together as if there had been
a year's thought over the plan of it, arranged with the most studied
inequality—with the most delicate symmetry—with the most elaborate
contrast, a picture in itself. You may try every other piece of cloud in
the heaven, and you will find them every one as perfect, and yet not one
in the least like another.
Now it may perhaps, for anything we know, or have yet proved, be highly
expedient and proper, in art, that this variety,
individuality, and angular character should be changed into a § 7. Their
characters, as given by S. Rosa.mass of convex curves, each precisely
like its neighbor in all respects, and unbroken from beginning to
end;—it may be highly original, masterly, bold, whatever you choose to
call it; but it is false. I do not take upon me to assert that the
clouds which in ancient Germany were more especially and peculiarly
devoted to the business of catching princesses off desert islands, and
carrying them to enchanted castles, might not have possessed something
of the pillowy organization which we may suppose best adapted for
functions of such delicacy and dispatch. But I do mean to say that the
clouds which God sends upon his earth as the ministers of dew, and rain,
and shade, and with which he adorns his heaven, setting them in its
vault for the thrones of his spirits, have not in one instant or atom of
their existence, one feature in common with such conceptions and
creations. And there are, beyond dispute, more direct and unmitigated
falsehoods told, and more laws of nature set at open defiance in one
of the "rolling" skies of Salvator, such as that marked 159 in the
Dulwich Gallery, than were ever attributed, even by the ignorant and
unfeeling, to all the wildest flights of Turner put together.
And it is not as if the error were only occasional. It is systematic and
constant in all the Italian masters of the seventeenth century, and in
most of the Dutch. They looked at § 8. Monotony and falsehood of the
clouds of the Italian School generally.clouds as at everything else
which did not particularly help them in their great end of deception,
with utter carelessness and bluntness of feeling,—saw that there were a
great many rounded passages in them,—found it much easier to sweep
circles than to design beauties, and sat down in their studies,
contented with perpetual repetitions of the same spherical conceptions,
having about the same relation to the clouds of nature, that a child's
carving of a turnip has to the head of the Apollo. Look at the round
things about the sun in the bricky Claude, the smallest of the three
Seaports in the National Gallery. They are a great deal more like
half-crowns than clouds. Take the ropy, tough-looking wreath in the
Sacrifice of Isaac, and find one part of it, if you can, which is not
the repetition of every other part of it, all together being
as round and vapid as the brush could draw them; or take the two
cauliflower-like protuberances in No. 220 of the Dulwich Gallery, and
admire the studied similarity between them; you cannot tell which is
which; or take the so-called Nicholas Poussin, No. 212, Dulwich Gallery,
in which, from the brown trees to the right-hand side of the picture,
there is not one line which is not physically impossible.
But it is not the outline only which is thus systematically false. The
drawing of the solid form is worse still, for it is to be remembered
that although clouds of course arrange themselves § 9. Vast size of
congregated masses of cloud.more or less into broad masses, with a light
side and dark side, both their light and shade are invariably composed
of a series of divided masses, each of which has in its outline as much
variety and character as the great outline of the cloud; presenting,
therefore, a thousand times repeated, all that I have described as
characteristic of the general form. Nor are these multitudinous
divisions a truth of slight importance in the character of sky, for they
are dependent on, and illustrative of, a quality which is usually in a
great degree overlooked,—the enormous retiring spaces of solid clouds.
Between the illumined edge of a heaped cloud, and that part of its body
which turns into shadow, there will generally be a clear distance of
several miles, more or less of course, according to the general size of
the cloud, but in such large masses as in Poussin and others of the old
masters, occupy the fourth or fifth of the visible sky; the clear
illumined breadth of vapor, from the edge to the shadow, involves at
least a distance of five or six miles. We are little apt, in watching
§ 10. Demonstrable by comparison with mountain ranges.the changes of a
mountainous range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapor which
compose it, are huger and higher than any mountain range of the earth;
and the distances between mass and mass are not yards of air traversed
in an instant by the flying form, but valleys of changing atmosphere
leagues over; that the slow motion of ascending curves, which we can
scarcely trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapor rushing into the
heaven a thousand feet in a minute; and that the toppling angle whose
sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitudinous forms around it,
is a nodding precipice of storms, 3000 feet from base to summit. It is not until we have actually compared the forms of the sky with
the hill ranges of the earth, and seen the soaring Alp overtopped and
buried in one surge of the sky, that we begin to conceive or appreciate
the colossal scale of the phenomena of the latter. But of this there can
be no doubt in the mind of any one accustomed to trace the forms of
clouds among hill ranges—as it is there a demonstrable and evident
fact, that the space of vapor visibly extended over an ordinarily cloudy
sky, is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the horizon,
than twenty leagues; that the size of every mass of separate form, if it
be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of miles; and
that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky, is an
enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height, six or
seven miles over an illuminated surface, furrowed by a thousand colossal
ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks and promontories, and
changing its features with the majestic velocity of the volcano.
To those who have once convinced themselves of these proportions of the
heaven, it will be immediately evident, that though we might, without
much violation of truth, omit the § 11. And consequent divisions and
varieties of feature.minor divisions of a cloud four yards over, it is
the veriest audacity of falsehood to omit those of masses where for
yards we have to read miles; first, because it is physically impossible
that such a space should be without many and vast divisions; secondly,
because divisions at such distances must be sharply and forcibly marked
by aerial perspective, so that not only they must be there, but they
must be visible and evident to the eye; and thirdly, because these
multitudinous divisions are absolutely necessary, in order to express
this space and distance, which cannot but be fully and imperfectly felt,
even with every aid and evidence that art can give of it.
Now if an artist taking for his subject a chain of vast mountains,
several leagues long, were to unite all their varieties of ravine, crag,
chasm, and precipice, into one solid, unbroken § 12. Not lightly to be
omitted.mass, with one light side and one dark side, looking like a
white ball or parallelopiped two yards broad, the words "breadth,"
"boldness," or, "generalization," would scarcely be received as a
sufficient apology for a proceeding so glaringly false, and
so painfully degrading. But when, instead of the really large and simple
forms of mountains, united, as they commonly are, by some great
principle of common organization, and so closely resembling each other
as often to correspond in line, and join in effect; when instead of
this, we have to do with spaces of cloud twice as vast, broken up into a
multiplicity of forms necessary to, and characteristic of, their very
nature—those forms subject to a thousand local changes, having no
association with each other, and rendered visible in a thousand places
by their own transparency or cavities, where the mountain forms would be
lost in shade,—that this far greater space, and this far more
complicated arrangement, should be all summed up into one round mass,
with one swell of white, and one flat side of unbroken gray, is
considered an evidence of the sublimest powers in the artist of
generalization and breadth. Now it may be broad, it may be grand, it may
be beautiful, artistical, and in every way desirable. I don't say it is
not—I merely say it is a concentration of every kind of falsehood: it
is depriving heaven of its space, clouds of their buoyancy, winds of
their motion, and distance of its blue.
This is done, more or less, by all the old masters, without an
exception.[32] Their idea of clouds was altogether similar; more or less
perfectly carried out, according to their § 13. Imperfect conceptions of
this size and extent in ancient landscape.power of hand and accuracy of
eye, but universally the same in conception. It was the idea of a
comparatively small, round, puffed-up white body, irregularly associated
with other round and puffed-up white bodies, each with a white light
side, and a gray dark side, and a soft reflected light, floating a great
way below a blue dome. Such is the idea of a cloud formed by most
people; it is the first, general, uncultivated notion of what we see
every day. People think of the clouds as about as large as they
look—forty yards over, perhaps; they see generally that they are solid
bodies subject to the same laws as other solid bodies, roundish,
whitish, and apparently suspended a great way under a high blue
concavity. So that these ideas be tolerably given with smooth paint,
they are content, and call it nature. How different it is
from anything that nature ever did, or ever will do, I have endeavored
to show; but I cannot, and do not, expect the contrast to be fully felt,
unless the reader will actually go out on days when, either before or
after rain, the clouds arrange themselves into vigorous masses, and
after arriving at something like a conception of their distance and
size, from the mode in which they retire over the horizon, will for
himself trace and watch their varieties of form and outline, as mass
rises over mass in their illuminated bodies. Let him climb from step to
step over their craggy and broken slopes, let him plunge into the long
vistas of immeasurable perspective, that guide back to the blue sky; and
when he finds his imagination lost in their immensity, and his senses
confused with their multitude, let him go to Claude, to Salvator, or to
Poussin, and ask them for a like space, or like infinity.
But perhaps the most grievous fault of all, in the clouds of these
painters, is the utter want of transparency. Not in her most ponderous
and lightless masses will nature ever leave us § 14. Total want of
transparency and evanescence in the clouds of ancient landscape.without
some evidence of transmitted sunshine; and she perpetually gives us
passages in which the vapor becomes visible only by the sunshine which
it arrests and holds within itself, not caught on its surface, but
entangled in its mass—floating fleeces, precious with the gold of
heaven; and this translucency is especially indicated on the dark sides
even of her heaviest wreaths, which possess opalescent and delicate hues
of partial illumination, far more dependent upon the beams which pass
through them than on those which are reflected upon them. Nothing, on
the contrary, can be more painfully and ponderously opaque than the
clouds of the old masters universally. However far removed in aerial
distance, and however brilliant in light, they never appear filmy or
evanescent, and their light is always on them, not in them. And this
effect is much increased by the positive and persevering determination
on the part of their outlines not to be broken in upon, nor interfered
with in the slightest degree, by any presumptuous blue, or impertinent
winds. There is no inequality, no variation, no losing or disguising of
line, no melting into nothingness, nor shattering into spray; edge
succeeds edge with imperturbable equanimity, and nothing
short of the most decided interference on the part of tree-tops, or the
edge of the picture, prevents us from being able to follow them all the
way round, like the coast of an island.
And be it remembered that all these faults and deficiencies are to be
found in their drawing merely of the separate masses of the solid
cumulus, the easiest drawn of all clouds. But § 15. Farther proof of
their deficiency in space.nature scarcely ever confines herself to such
masses; they form but the thousandth part of her variety of effect. She
builds up a pyramid of their boiling volumes, bars this across like a
mountain with the gray cirrus, envelops it in black, ragged, drifting
vapor, covers the open part of the sky with mottled horizontal fields,
breaks through these with sudden and long sunbeams, tears up their edges
with local winds, scatters over the gaps of blue the infinity of
multitude of the high cirri, and melts even the unoccupied azure into
palpitating shades. And all this is done over and over again in every
quarter of a mile. Where Poussin or Claude have three similar masses,
nature has fifty pictures, made up each of millions of minor
thoughts—fifty aisles penetrating through angelic chapels to the
Shechinah of the blue—fifty hollow ways among bewildered hills—each
with their own nodding rocks, and cloven precipices, and radiant
summits, and robing vapors, but all unlike each other, except in beauty,
all bearing witness to the unwearied, exhaustless operation of the
Infinite Mind. Now, in cases like these especially, as we observed
before of general nature, though it is altogether hopeless to follow out
in the space of any one picture this incalculable and inconceivable
glory, yet the painter can at least see that the space he has at his
command, narrow and confined as it is, is made complete use of, and that
no part of it shall be without entertainment and food for thought. If he
could subdivide it by millionths of inches, he could not reach the
multitudinous majesty of nature; but it is at least incumbent upon him
to make the most of what he has, and not, by exaggerating the
proportions, banishing the variety and repeating the forms of his
clouds, to set at defiance the eternal principles of the
heavens—fitfulness and infinity. And now let us, keeping in memory what
we have seen of Poussin and Salvator, take up one of
Turner's skies, and see whether he is as narrow § 16. Instance of
perfect truth in the sky of Turner's Babylon.in his conception, or as
niggardly in his space. It does not matter which we take, his sublime
Babylon[33] is a fair example for our present purpose. Ten miles away,
down the Euphrates, where it gleams last along the plain, he gives us a
drift of dark elongated vapor, melting beneath into a dim haze which
embraces the hills on the horizon. It is exhausted with its own motion,
and broken up by the wind in its own body into numberless groups of
billowy and tossing fragments, which, beaten by the weight of storm down
to the earth, are just lifting themselves again on wearied wings, and
perishing in the effort. Above these, and far beyond them, the eye goes
back to a broad sea of white, illuminated mist, or rather cloud melted
into rain, and absorbed again before that rain has fallen, but
penetrated throughout, whether it be vapor or whether it be dew, with
soft sunshine, turning it as white as snow. Gradually as it rises, the
rainy fusion ceases, you cannot tell where the film of blue on the left
begins—but it is deepening, deepening still,—and the cloud, with its
edge first invisible, then all but imaginary, then just felt when the
eye is not fixed on it, and lost when it is, at last rises, keen from
excessive distance, but soft and mantling in its body, as a swan's bosom
fretted by faint wind, heaving fitfully against the delicate deep blue,
with white waves, whose forms are traced by the pale lines of opalescent
shadow, shade only because the light is within it, and not upon it, and
which break with their own swiftness into a driven line of level spray,
winnowed into threads by the wind, and flung before the following vapor
like those swift shafts of arrowy water which a great cataract shoots
into the air beside it, trying to find the earth. Beyond these, again,
rises a colossal mountain of gray cumulus, through whose shadowed sides
the sunbeams penetrate in dim, sloping, rain-like shafts; and over which
they fall in a broad burst of streaming light, sinking to the earth, and
showing through their own visible radiance the three successive ranges
of hills which connect its desolate plain with space. Above, the edgy
summit of the cumulus, broken into fragments, recedes into
the sky, which is peopled in its serenity with quiet multitudes of the
white, soft, silent cirrus; and under these again, drift near the
zenith, disturbed and impatient shadows of a darker spirit, seeking rest
and finding none.
Now this is nature! It is the exhaustless living energy with which the
universe is filled; and what will you set beside it of the works of
other men? Show me a single picture, in the § 17. And in his Pools of
Solomon.whole compass of ancient art, in which I can pass from cloud to
cloud, from region to region, from first to second and third heaven, as
I can here, and you may talk of Turner's want of truth. Turn to the
Pools of Solomon, and walk through the passages of mist as they melt on
the one hand into those stormy fragments of fiery cloud, or, on the
other, into the cold solitary shadows that compass the sweeping hill,
and when you find an inch without air and transparency, and a
hairbreadth without changefulness and thought; and when you can count
the torn waves of tossing radiance that gush from the sun, as you can
count the fixed, white, insipidities of Claude; or when you can measure
the modulation and the depth of that hollow mist, as you can the
flourishes of the brush upon the canvas of Salvator, talk of Turner's
want of truth!
But let us take up simpler and less elaborate works, for there is too
much in these to admit of being analyzed.
In the vignette of the Lake of Como, in Rogers's Italy, the space is so
small that the details have been partially lost by the engraver; but
enough remain to illustrate the great principles § 18. Truths of outline
and character in his Como.of cloud from which we have endeavored to
explain. Observe first the general angular outline of the volumes on the
left of the sun. If you mark the points where the direction of their
outline changes, and connect those points by right lines, the cloud will
touch, but will not cut, those lines throughout. Yet its contour is as
graceful as it is full of character—toppling, ready to change—fragile
as enormous—evanescent as colossal. Observe how, where it crosses the
line of the sun, it becomes luminous, illustrating what has been
observed of the visibility of mist in sunlight. Observe, above all, the
multiplicity of its solid form, the depth of its shadows in perpetual
transition: it is not round and swelled, half light and half dark, but
full of breaking irregular shadow and transparency—variable
as the wind, and melting imperceptibly above into the haziness of the
sunlighted atmosphere, contrasted in all its vast forms with the
delicacy and the multitude of the brightly touched cirri. Nothing can
surpass the truth of this; the cloud is as gigantic in its simplicity as
the Alp which it opposes; but how various, how transparent, how infinite
in its organization!
I would draw especial attention, both here and in all other works of
Turner, to the beautiful use of the low horizontal bars or fields of
cloud, (cirrostratus,) which associate themselves so § 19. Association
of the cirrostratus with the cumulus.frequently—more especially before
storms—with the true cumulus, floating on its flanks, or capping it, as
if it were a mountain, and seldom mingling with its substance, unless in
the very formation of rain. They supply us with one of those beautiful
instances of natural composition, by which the artist is superseded and
excelled—for, by the occurrence of these horizontal flakes, the rolling
form of the cumulus is both opposed in its principal lines, and gifted
with an apparent solidity and vastness, which no other expedient could
have exhibited, and which far exceed in awfulness the impression of the
noblest mountains of the earth. I have seen in the evening light of
Italy, the Alps themselves out-towered by ranges of these mighty clouds,
alternately white in the starlight, and inhabited by fire.
Turn back to the first vignette in the Italy. The angular outlines and
variety of modulation in the clouds above the sail, and the delicate
atmosphere of morning into which they are § 20. The deep-based knowledge
of the Alps in Turner's Lake of Geneva.dissolved about the breathing
hills, require no comment; but one part of this vignette demands
especial notice; it is the repetition of the outline of the snowy
mountain by the light cloud above it. The cause of this I have already
explained (vide page 228,) and its occurrence here is especially
valuable as bearing witness to the thorough and scientific knowledge
thrown by Turner into his slightest works. The thing cannot be seen once
in six months; it would not have been noticed, much less introduced by
an ordinary artist, and to the public it is a dead letter, or an
offence. Ninety-nine persons in a hundred would not have observed this
pale wreath of parallel cloud above the hill, and the
hundredth in all probability says it is unnatural. It requires the most
intimate and accurate knowledge of the Alps before such a piece of
refined truth can be understood.
At the 216th page we have another and a new case, in which clouds in
perfect repose, unaffected by wind, or any influence but that of their
own elastic force, boil, rise, and melt in the § 21. Further principles
of cloud form exemplified in his Amalfi.heaven with more approach to
globular form than under any other circumstances is possible. I name
this vignette, not only because it is most remarkable for the buoyancy
and elasticity of inward energy, indicated through the most ponderous
forms, and affords us a beautiful instance of the junction of the
cirrostratus with the cumulus, of which we have just been speaking (§
19,) but because it is a characteristic example of Turner's use of one
of the facts of nature not hitherto noticed, that the edge of a
partially transparent body is often darker than its central surface,
because at the edge the light penetrates and passes through, which from
the centre is reflected to the eye. The sharp, cutting edge of a wave,
if not broken into foam, frequently appears for an instant almost black;
and the outlines of these massy clouds, where their projecting forms
rise in relief against the light of their bodies, are almost always
marked clearly and firmly by very dark edges. Hence we have frequently,
if not constantly, multitudinous forms indicated only by outline, giving
character and solidity to the great masses of light, without taking away
from their breadth. And Turner avails himself of these boldly and
constantly,—outlining forms with the brush of which no other indication
is given. All the grace and solidity of the white cloud on the
right-hand side of the vignette before us, depends upon such outlines.
As I before observed of mere execution, that one of the best tests of
its excellence was the expression of infinity; so it may be noticed
with respect to the painting of details generally, § 22. Reasons for
insisting on the infinity of Turner's works. Infinity is almost an
unerring test of all truth.that more difference lies between one
artist and another, in the attainment of this quality, than in any other
of the efforts of art; and that if we wish, without reference to beauty
of composition, or any other interfering circumstances, to form a
judgment of the truth of painting, perhaps the very first thing we should look for, whether in one thing or another—foliage, or
clouds, or waves—should be the expression of infinity always and
everywhere, in all parts and divisions of parts. For we may be quite
sure that what is not infinite, cannot be true; it does not, indeed,
follow that what is infinite, always is true, but it cannot be
altogether false, for this simple reason; that it is impossible for
mortal mind to compose an infinity of any kind for itself, or to form an
idea of perpetual variation, and to avoid all repetition, merely by its
own combining resources. The moment that we trust to ourselves, we
repeat ourselves, and therefore the moment we see in a work of any kind
whatsoever, the expression of infinity, we may be certain that the
workman has gone to nature for it; while, on the other hand, the moment
we see repetition, or want of infinity, we may be certain that the
workman has not gone to nature for it.
For instance, in the picture of Salvator before noticed, No. 220 in the
Dulwich Gallery, as we see at once that the two § 23. Instances of the
total want of it in the works of Salvator.masses of cloud absolutely
repeat each other in every one of their forms, and that each is composed
of about twelve white sweeps of the brush, all forming the same curve,
and all of the same length; and as we can count these, and measure their
common diameter, and by stating the same to anybody else, convey to him
a full and perfect idea and knowledge of that sky in all its parts and
proportions,—as we can do this, we may be absolutely certain, without
reference to the real sky, or to any other part of nature, without even
knowing what the white things were intended for, we may be certain that
they cannot possibly resemble anything; that whatever they were meant
for, they can be nothing but a violent contradiction of all nature's
principles and forms. When, on the other hand, we take up such a sky as
that of Turner's Rouen, seen from St. Catherine's Hill, in the Rivers of
§ 24. And of the universal presence of it in those of Turner. The
conclusions which may be arrived at from it.France, and find, in the
first place, that he has given us a distance over the hills in the
horizon, into which, when we are tired of penetrating, we must turn and
come back again, there being not the remotest chance of getting to the
end of it; and when we see that from this measureless distance up to the
zenith, the whole sky is one ocean of alternate waves of cloud and light, so blended together that the eye cannot rest on any one
without being guided to the next, and so to a hundred more, till it is
lost over and over again in every wreath—that if it divides the sky
into quarters of inches, and tries to count or comprehend the component
parts of any single one of those divisions, it is still as utterly
defied and defeated by the part as by the whole—that there is not one
line out of the millions there which repeats another, not one which is
unconnected with another, not one which does not in itself convey
histories of distance and space, and suggest new and changeful form;
then we may be all but certain, though these forms are too mysterious
and too delicate for us to analyze—though all is so crowded and so
connected that it is impossible to test any single part by particular
laws—yet without any such tests, we may be sure that this infinity can
only be based on truth—that it must be nature, because man could not
have originated it, and that every form must be faithful, because none
is like another. And therefore it is that I insist so constantly on this
great quality of landscape painting, as it appears in Turner; because it
is not merely a constant and most important truth in itself, but it
almost amounts to a demonstration of every other truth. And it will be
found a far rarer attainment in the works of other § 25. The
multiplication of objects, or increase of their size, will not give the
impression of infinity, but is the resource of novices.men than is
commonly supposed, and the sign, wherever it is really found, of the
very highest art. For we are apt to forget that the greatest number is
no nearer infinity than the least, if it be definite number; and the
vastest bulk is no nearer infinity than the most minute, if it be
definite bulk; so that a man may multiply his objects forever and ever,
and be no nearer infinity than he had reached with one, if he do not
vary them and confuse them; and a man may reach infinity in every touch
and line, and part, and unit, if in these he be truthfully various and
obscure. And we shall find, the more we examine the works of the old
masters, that always, and in all parts, they are totally wanting in
every feeling of infinity, and therefore in all truth: and even in the
works of the moderns, though the aim is far more just, we shall
frequently perceive an erroneous choice of means, and a substitution of
mere number or bulk for real infinity.
And therefore, in concluding our notice of the central cloud region, I
should wish to dwell particularly on those skies of Turner's, in which
we have the whole space of the heaven covered § 26. Farther instances of
infinity in the gray skies of Turner.with the delicate dim flakes of
gathering vapor, which are the intermediate link between the central
region and that of the rain-cloud, and which assemble and grow out of
the air; shutting up the heaven with a gray interwoven veil, before the
approach of storm, faint, but universal, letting the light of the upper
sky pass pallidly through their body, but never rending a passage for
the ray. We have the first approach and gathering of this kind of sky
most gloriously given in the vignette at page 115 of Rogers's Italy,
which is one of the most perfect pieces of feeling (if I may transgress
my usual rules for an instant) extant in art, owing to the extreme
grandeur and stern simplicity of the strange and ominous forms of level
cloud behind the building. In that at page 223, there are passages of
the same kind, of exceeding perfection. The sky through which the dawn
is breaking in the Voyage of Columbus, and that with the Moonlight under
the Rialto, in Rogers's Poems, the skies of the Bethlehem, and the
Pyramids in Finden's Bible series, and among the Academy pictures, that
of the Hero and Leander, and Flight into Egypt, are characteristic and
noble examples, as far as any individual works can be characteristic of
the universality of this mighty mind. I ought not to forget the
magnificent solemnity and fulness of the wreaths of gathering darkness
in the Folkestone.
We must not pass from the consideration of the central cloud region
without noticing the general high quality of the cloud-drawing § 27. The
excellence of the cloud-drawing of Stanfield.of Stanfield. He is limited
in his range, and is apt in extensive compositions to repeat himself,
neither is he ever very refined; but his cloud-form is firmly and
fearlessly chiselled, with perfect knowledge, though usually with some
want of feeling. As far as it goes, it is very grand and very tasteful,
beautifully developed in the space of its solid parts and full of
action. Next to Turner, he is incomparably the noblest master of
cloud-form of all our artists; in fact, he is the only one among them
who really can draw a cloud. For it is a very different thing to rub
out an irregular white space neatly with the handkerchief, or to leave a
bright little bit of paper in the middle of a wash, and to
give the real § 28. The average standing of the English school.anatomy
of cloud-form with perfect articulation of chiaroscuro. We have
multitudes of painters who can throw a light bit of straggling vapor
across their sky, or leave in it delicate and tender passages of
breaking light; but this is a very different thing from taking up each
of those bits or passages, and giving it structure, and parts, and
solidity. The eye is satisfied with exceedingly little, as an indication
of cloud, and a few clever sweeps of the brush on wet paper may give all
that it requires; but this is not drawing clouds, nor will it ever
appeal fully and deeply to the mind, except when it occurs only as a
part of a higher system. And there is not one of our modern artists,
except Stanfield, who can do much more than this. As soon as they
attempt to lay detail upon their clouds, they appear to get bewildered,
forget that they are dealing with forms regulated by precisely the same
simple laws of light and shade as more substantial matter, overcharge
their color, confuse their shadows and dark sides, and end in mere
ragged confusion. I believe the evil arises from their never attempting
to render clouds except with the brush; other objects, at some period of
study, they take up with the chalk or lead, and so learn something of
their form; but they appear to consider clouds as altogether dependent
on cobalt and camel's hair, and so never understand anything of their
real anatomy. But whatever the cause, I cannot point to any central
clouds of the moderns, except those of Turner and Stanfield, as really
showing much knowledge of, or feeling for, nature, though all are
superior to the conventional and narrow conceptions of the ancients. We
are all right as far as we go, our work may be incomplete, but it is not
false; and it is far better, far less injurious to the mind, that we
should be little attracted to the sky, and taught to be satisfied with a
light suggestion of truthful form, than that we should be drawn to it by
violently pronounced outline and intense color, to find in its finished
falsehood everything to displease or to mislead—to hurt our feelings,
if we have foundation for them, and corrupt them, if we have none.
Here I include even the great ones—even Titian and
Veronese,—excepting only Tintoret and the religious schools.
Engraved in Findel's Bible Illustrations.
OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS: THIRDLY, OF THE REGION OF THE
RAIN-CLOUD.
The clouds which I wish to consider as characteristic of the lower, or
rainy region, differ not so much in their real nature § 1. The apparent
difference in character between the lower and central clouds is
dependent chiefly on proximity.from those of the central and uppermost
regions, as in appearance, owing to their greater nearness. For the
central clouds, and perhaps even the high cirri, deposit moisture, if
not distinctly rain, as is sufficiently proved by the existence of snow
on the highest peaks of the Himaleh; and when, on any such mountains, we
are brought into close contact with the central clouds,[34] we find them
little differing from the ordinary rain-cloud of the plains, except by
being slightly less dense and dark. But the apparent differences,
dependent on proximity, are most marked and important.
In the first place, the clouds of the central region have, as has been
before observed, pure and aerial grays for their dark sides, owing to
their necessary distance from the observer; and as this § 2. Their
marked difference in color.distance permits a multitude of local
phenomena capable of influencing color, such as accidental sunbeams,
refractions, transparencies, or local mists and showers, to be collected
into a space comparatively small, the colors of these clouds are always
changeful and palpitating; and whatever degree of gray or of gloom may
be mixed with them is invariably pure and aerial. But the nearness of
the rain-cloud rendering it impossible for a number of phenomena to be
at once visible, makes its hue of gray monotonous, and (by
losing the blue of distance) warm and brown compared to that of the
upper clouds. This is especially remarkable on any part of it which may
happen to be illumined, which is of a brown, bricky, ochreous tone,
never bright, always coming in dark outline on the lights of the central
clouds. But it is seldom that this takes place, and when it does, never
over large spaces, little being usually seen of the rain-cloud but its
under and dark side. This, when the cloud above is dense, becomes of an
inky and cold gray, and sulphureous and lurid if there be thunder in the
air.
With these striking differences in color, it presents no fewer nor less
important in form, chiefly from losing almost all definiteness of
character and outline. It is sometimes nothing more § 3. And in
definiteness of form.than a thin mist, whose outline cannot be traced,
rendering the landscape locally indistinct or dark; if its outline be
visible, it is ragged and torn; rather a spray of cloud, taken off its
edge and sifted by the wind, than an edge of the cloud itself. In fact,
it rather partakes of the nature, and assumes the appearance, of real
water in the state of spray, than of elastic vapor. This appearance is
enhanced by the usual presence of formed rain, carried along with it in
a columnar form, ordinarily, of course, reaching the ground like a veil,
but very often suspended with the cloud, and hanging from it like a
jagged fringe, or over it in light, rain being always lighter than the
cloud it falls from. These columns, or fringes, of rain are often waved
and bent by the wind, or twisted, sometimes even swept upwards from the
cloud. The velocity of these vapors, though not necessarily in reality
greater than that of the central clouds, appears greater, owing to their
proximity, and, of course, also to the usual presence of a more violent
wind. They are also apparently much more in the power of § 4. They are
subject to precisely the same great laws.the wind, having less elastic
force in themselves; but they are precisely subject to the same great
laws of form which regulate the upper clouds. They are not solid bodies
borne about with the wind, but they carry the wind with them, and cause
it. Every one knows, who has ever been out in a storm, that the time
when it rains heaviest is precisely the time when he cannot hold up his
umbrella; that the wind is carried with the cloud, and lulls when it has
passed. Every one who has ever seen rain in a hill country,
knows that a rain-cloud, like any other, may have all its parts in rapid
motion, and yet, as a whole, remain in one spot. I remember once, when
in crossing the Tête Noire, I had turned up the valley towards Trient, I
noticed a rain-cloud forming on the Glacier de Trient. With a west wind,
it proceeded towards the Col de Balme, being followed by a prolonged
wreath of vapor, always forming exactly at the same spot over the
glacier. This long, serpent-like line of cloud went on at a great rate
till it reached the valley leading down from the Col de Balme, under the
slate rocks of the Croix de Fer. There it turned sharp round, and came
down this valley, at right angles to its former progress, and finally
directly contrary to it, till it came down within five hundred feet of
the village, where it disappeared; the line behind always advancing, and
always disappearing, at the same spot. This continued for half an hour,
the long line describing the curve of a horseshoe; always coming into
existence, and always vanishing at exactly the same places; traversing
the space between with enormous swiftness. This cloud, ten miles off,
would have looked like a perfectly motionless wreath, in the form of a
horseshoe, hanging over the hills.
To the region of the rain-cloud belong also all those phenomena of
drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in the morning or evening; in
valleys, or over water, mirage, white § 5. Value, to the painter, of the
rain-cloud.steaming vapor rising in evaporation from moist and open
surfaces, and everything which visibly affects the condition of the
atmosphere without actually assuming the form of cloud. These phenomena
are as perpetual in all countries as they are beautiful, and afford by
far the most effective and valuable means which the painter possesses,
for modification of the forms of fixed objects. The upper clouds are
distinct and comparatively opaque, they do not modify, but conceal; but
through the rain-cloud, and its accessory phenomena, all that is
beautiful may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed; what
is paltry may be made to look vast, and what is ponderous, aerial;
mystery may be obtained without obscurity, and decoration without
disguise. And, accordingly, nature herself uses it constantly, as one of
her chief means of most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another,
but everywhere—everywhere; at least, where there is
anything worth calling landscape. I cannot answer for the desert of the
Sahara, but I know that there can be no greater mistake, than supposing
that delicate and variable effects of mist and rain-cloud are peculiar
to northern climates. I have never seen in any place or country effects
of mist more perfect than in the Campagna of § 6. The old masters have
not left a single instance of the painting of the rain-cloud, and very
few efforts at it. Gaspar Poussin's storms.Rome, and among the hills of
Sorrento. It is therefore matter of no little marvel to me, and I
conceive that it can scarcely be otherwise to any reflecting person,
that throughout the whole range of ancient landscape art, there occurs
no instance of the painting of a real rain-cloud, still less of any of
the more delicate phenomena characteristic of the region. "Storms"
indeed, as the innocent public persist in calling such abuses of nature
and abortions of art as the two windy Gaspars in our National Gallery,
are common enough; massive concretions of ink and indigo, wrung and
twisted very hard, apparently in a vain effort to get some moisture out
of them; bearing up courageously and successfully against a wind, whose
effects on the trees in the foreground can be accounted for only on the
supposition that they are all of the India-rubber species. Enough of
this in all conscience, we have, and to spare; but for the legitimate
rain-cloud, with its ragged and spray-like edge, its veilly
transparency, and its columnar burden of blessing, neither it, nor
anything like it, or approaching it, occurs in any painting of the old
masters that I have ever seen; and I have seen enough to warrant my
affirming that if it occur anywhere, it must be through accident rather
than intention. Nor is there stronger evidence of any perception, on the
part of these much respected artists, that there were such things in the
world as mists or vapors. If a cloud under their direction ever touches
a mountain, it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. There is
no mystifying the matter; here is a cloud, and there is a hill; if it is
to come on at all, it comes on to some purpose, and there is no hope of
its ever going off again. We have, therefore, little to say of the
efforts of the old masters, in any scenes which might naturally have
been connected with the clouds of the lowest region, except that the
faults of form specified in considering the central clouds, are, by way
of being energetic or sublime, more glaringly and
audaciously committed in their "storms;" and that what is a wrong form
among clouds possessing form, is there given with increased generosity
of fiction to clouds which have no form at all.
Supposing that we had nothing to show in modern art, of the region of
the rain-cloud, but the dash of Cox, the blot of de § 7. The great power
of the moderns in this respect.Wint, or even the ordinary stormy skies
of the body of our inferior water-color painters, we might yet laugh all
efforts of the old masters to utter scorn. But one among our water-color
artists, deserves especial notice—before we ascend the steps of the
solitary throne—as having done in his peculiar walk, what for faithful
and pure truth, truth indeed of a limited range and unstudied
application, but yet most faithful and most pure, will remain
unsurpassed if not unrivalled,—Copley Fielding. We are well aware how
much of § 8. Works of Copley Fielding.what he has done depends in a
great degree upon particular tricks of execution, or on a labor somewhat
too mechanical to be meritorious; that it is rather the texture than
the plan of his sky which is to be admired, and that the greater part
of what is pleasurable in it will fall rather under the head of
dexterous imitation than of definite thought. But whatever detractions
from his merit we may be compelled to make on these grounds, in
considering art as the embodying of beauty, or the channel of mind, it
is impossible, when we are speaking of truth only, to pass by his down
scenes and moorland showers, of some years ago, in which he produced
some of the most perfect and faultless passages of mist and rain-cloud
which art has ever seen. Wet, § 9. His peculiar truth.transparent,
formless, full of motion, felt rather by their shadows on the hills than
by their presence in the sky, becoming dark only through increased depth
of space, most translucent where most sombre, and light only through
increased buoyancy of motion, letting the blue through their
interstices, and the sunlight through their chasms, with the irregular
playfulness and traceless gradation of nature herself, his skies will
remain, as long as their colors stand, among the most simple,
unadulterated, and complete transcripts of a particular nature which art
can point to. Had he painted five instead of five hundred such, and gone
on to other sources of beauty, he might, there can be little
doubt, have been one of our greatest artists. § 10. His weakness and its
probable cause.But it often grieves us to see how his power is limited
to a particular moment, to that easiest moment for imitation, when
knowledge of form may be superseded by management of the brush, and the
judgment of the colorist by the manufacture of a color; the moment when
all form is melted down and drifted away in the descending veil of rain,
and when the variable and fitful colors of the heaven are lost in the
monotonous gray of its storm tones.[35] We can only account for this by
supposing that there is something radically wrong in his method of
study; for a man of his evident depth of feeling and pure love of truth
ought not to be, cannot be, except from some strange error in his mode
of out-of-door practice, thus limited in his range, and liable to
decline of power. We have little doubt that almost all such failures
arise from the artist's neglecting the use of the chalk, and supposing
that either the power of drawing forms, or the sense of their beauty,
can be maintained unweakened or unblunted, without constant and
laborious studies in simple light and shade, of form only. The brush is
at once the artist's greatest aid and enemy; it enables him to make his
power available, but at the same time, it undermines his power, and
unless it be constantly rejected for the pencil, never can be rightly
used. But whatever the obstacle be, we do not doubt that it is one
which, once seen, may be overcome or removed; and we are in the constant
hope of seeing this finely-minded artist shake off his lethargy, break
the shackles of habit, seek in extended and right study the sources of
real power, and become, what we have full faith in his capability of
being, one of the leading artists of his time.
In passing to the works of our greatest modern master, it must be
premised that the qualities which constitute a most essential § 11.
Impossibility of reasoning on the rain-clouds of Turner from
engravings.part of the truth of the rain-cloud, are in no degree to be
rendered by engraving. Its indefiniteness of torn and transparent form
is far beyond the power of even our best engravers: I do not say beyond
their possible power, if they would make themselves artists as well as
workmen, but far beyond the power they actually possess; while the depth
and delicacy of the grays which Turner employs or produces, as well as
the refinement of his execution, are, in the nature of things, utterly
beyond all imitation by the opaque and lifeless darkness of the steel.
What we say of his works, therefore, must be understood as referring
only to the original drawings; though we may name one or two instances
in which the engraver has, to a certain degree, succeeded in distantly
following the intention of the master.
Jumieges, in the Rivers of France, ought perhaps, after what we have
said of Fielding, to be our first object of attention, because § 12. His
rendering of Fielding's particular moment in the Jumieges.it is a
rendering by Turner of Fielding's particular moment, and the only one
existing, for Turner never repeats himself. One picture is allotted to
one truth; the statement is perfectly and gloriously made, and he passes
on to speak of a fresh portion of God's revelation.[36] The haze of
sunlit rain of this most magnificent picture, the gradual retirement of
the dark wood into its depth, and the sparkling and evanescent light
which sends its variable flashes on the abbey, figures, foliage, and
foam, require no comment—they speak home at once. But there is added to
§ 13. Illustration of the nature of clouds in the opposed forms of smoke
and steam.this noble composition an incident which may serve us at once
for a farther illustration of the nature and forms of cloud, and for a
final proof how deeply and philosophically Turner has studied them.
We have on the right of the picture, the steam and the smoke of a
passing steamboat. Now steam is nothing but an artificial cloud in the
process of dissipation; it is as much a cloud as those of the sky
itself, that is, a quantity of moisture rendered visible in the air by
imperfect solution. Accordingly, observe how exquisitely
irregular and broken are its forms, how sharp and spray-like; but with
all the facts observed which were pointed out in Chap. II. of this
Section, the convex side to the wind, the sharp edge on that side, the
other soft and lost. Smoke, on the contrary, is an actual substance
existing independently in the air, a solid opaque body, subject to no
absorption nor dissipation but that of tenuity. Observe its volumes;
there is no breaking up nor disappearing here; the wind carries its
elastic globes before it, but does not dissolve nor break them.[37]
Equally convex and void of angles on all sides, they are the exact
representatives of the clouds of the old masters, and serve at once to
show the ignorance and falsehood of these latter, and the accuracy of
study which has guided Turner to the truth.
From this picture we should pass to the Llanthony,[38] which is the
rendering of the moment immediately following that given in the
Jumieges. The shower is here half exhausted, half § 14. Moment of
retiring rain in the Llanthony.passed by, the last drops are rattling
faintly through the glimmering hazel boughs, the white torrent, swelled
by the sudden storm, flings up its hasty jets of springing spray to meet
the returning light; and these, as if the heaven regretted what it had
given, and were taking it back, pass, as they leap, into vapor, and fall
not again, but vanish in the shafts of the sunlight[39]—hurrying,
fitful, wind-woven sunlight—which glides through the thick leaves, and
paces along the pale rocks like rain; half conquering, half
quenched by the very mists which it summons itself from the lighted
pastures as it passes, and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from
the streaming crags; sending them with messages of peace to the far
summits of the yet unveiled mountains whose silence is still broken by
the sound of the rushing rain.
With this noble work we should compare one of which we can better judge
by the engraving—the Loch Coriskin, in the illustrations to Scott,
because it introduces us to another and a most § 15. And of commencing,
chosen with peculiar meaning for Loch Coriskin.remarkable instance of
the artist's vast and varied knowledge. When rain falls on a mountain
composed chiefly of barren rocks, their surfaces, being violently heated
by the sun, whose most intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion
sudden and violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower
into steam. Consequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of
rain, white volumes of vapor are instantaneously and universally formed,
which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain,
to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are cooled.
Where there is grass or vegetation, this effect is diminished; where
there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all. Now this effect has
evidently been especially chosen by Turner for Loch Coriskin, not only
because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor,
but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter
absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock:—
"The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of nature's genial glow,
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe.
And copse on Cruchan Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
On mountain, or in glen,
Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power,
The wearied eye may ken;
But all its rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone."
Lord of the Isles, Canto III
Here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire
acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood.
That which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and
meaningless confusion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a
full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as no means of
art could have otherwise given.
In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land's End, we have clouds without
rain—at twilight—enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing
nothing, every outline being visible through their § 16. The drawing of
transparent vapor in the Land's End.gloom; and not only the outline—for
it is easy to do this—but the surface. The bank of rocky coast
approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it
withdraws from the garment of cloud—not by edges more and more defined,
but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not
of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of
whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of
the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm
gray, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom, dependent
rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch
of color, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real
substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not
formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular,
shattered, and indefinite—full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste,
and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding
drift, of tortured vapor tossed up like men's hands, as in defiance of
the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks
into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other
characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. It is this
untraceable, § 17. The individual character of its parts.unconnected,
yet perpetual form—this fulness of character absorbed in the universal
energy—which distinguish nature and Turner from all their imitators. To
roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence
by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude;
but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence
of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet swept away and overpowered by one
omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us
"Be as a Presence or a motion—one
Among the many there—--while the mists
Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes
And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument,"—
this belongs only to nature and to him.
The drawing of Coventry may be particularized as a farther example of
this fine suggestion of irregularity and fitfulness, § 18. Deep studied
form of swift rain-cloud in the Coventry.through very constant
parallelism of direction, both in rain and clouds. The great mass of
cloud, which traverses the whole picture, is characterized throughout by
severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, into which every
one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself; but no one of these
right lines is actually and entirely parallel to any other, though all
have a certain tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses
the mind with the most distinct idea of parallelism. Neither are any
of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are
all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the
imagined line which joins the apices of these—a tangent to them all,
which is in reality straight.[40] They are suggested, not represented,
right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally
bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be
dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries
with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained)
not so much something borne before or by the wind, as the visible
form and presence of the wind itself. We could not possibly point out a
more magnificent piece § 19. Compared with forms given by Salvator.
drawing as a contrast to such works of Salvator as that before alluded
to (159 Dulwich Gallery). Both are rolling masses of connected cloud;
but in Turner's, there is not one curve that repeats another, nor one
curve in itself monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part
and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same forward,
fierce, inevitable influence of storm. In Salvator's, every curve
repeats its neighbor, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the
whole cloud is curling about hither and thither, evidently
without the slightest notion where it is going to, and unregulated by
any general influence whatsoever. I could not bring together two finer
or more instructive examples, the one of everything that is perfect, the
other of everything that is childish or abominable, in the
representation of the same facts.
But there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky of Turner's. Not
only are the lines of the rolling cloud thus irregular in their
parallelism, but those of the falling rain are equally § 20. Entire
expression of tempest by minute touches and circumstances in the
Coventry.varied in their direction, indicating the gusty changefulness
of the wind, and yet kept so straight and stern in their individual
descent, that we are not suffered to forget its strength. This
impression is still farther enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which
blows every way at once, yet turning perpetually in each of its swirls
back in the direction of the wind, but so suddenly and violently, as
almost to assume the angular lines of lightning. Farther, to complete
the impression, be it observed that all the cattle, both upon the near
and distant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock
still and stiff, with their heads down and their backs to the wind; and
finally, that we may be told not only what the storm is, but what it has
been, the gutter at the side of the road is gushing in a complete
torrent, and particular attention is directed to it by the full burst of
light in the sky being brought just above it, so that all its waves are
bright with the reflection.
But I have not quite done with this noble picture yet. Impetuous clouds,
twisted rain, flickering sunshine, fleeting shadow, gushing water, and
oppressed cattle, all speak the same § 21. Especially by contrast with a
passage of extreme repose.story of tumult, fitfulness, power, and
velocity. Only one thing is wanted, a passage of repose to contrast with
it all, and it is given. High and far above the dark volumes of the
swift rain-cloud, are seen on the left, through their opening, the
quiet, horizontal, silent flakes of the highest cirrus, resting in the
repose of the deep sky. Of all else that we have noticed in this
drawing, some faint idea can be formed from the engraving: but not the
slightest of the delicate and soft forms of these pausing vapors, and
still less of the exquisite depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue
with which they are islanded. Engravers, indeed, invariably
lose the effect of all passages of cold color, under the mistaken idea
that it is to be kept pale in order to indicate distance; whereas it
ought commonly to be darker than the rest of the sky.
To appreciate the full truth of this passage, we must understand another
effect peculiar to the rain-cloud, that its openings § 22. The truth of
this particular passage. Perfectly pure blue sky only seen after rain,
and how seen.exhibit the purest blue which the sky ever shows. For, as
we saw in the first chapter of this section, that aqueous vapor always
turns the sky more or less gray, it follows that we never can see the
azure so intense as when the greater part of this vapor has just fallen
in rain. Then, and then only, pure blue sky becomes visible in the first
openings, distinguished especially by the manner in which the clouds
melt into it; their edges passing off in faint white threads and
fringes, through which the blue shines more and more intensely, till the
last trace of vapor is lost in its perfect color. It is only the upper
white clouds, however, which do this, or the last fragments of
rain-clouds, becoming white as they disappear, so that the blue is never
corrupted by the cloud, but only paled and broken with pure white, the
purest white which the sky ever shows. Thus we have a melting and
palpitating color, never the same for two inches together, deepening and
broadening here and there into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted
and dying away through every tone of pure pale sky, into the snow white
of the filmy cloud. Over this roll the determined edges of the
rain-clouds, throwing it all far back, as a retired scene, into the
upper sky. Of this § 23. Absence of this effect in the works of the old
masters.effect the old masters, as far as I remember, have taken no
cognizance whatsoever; all with them is, as we partially noticed before,
either white cloud or pure blue: they have no notion of any
double-dealing or middle measures. They bore a hole in the sky, and let
you up into a pool of deep, stagnant blue, marked off by the clear round
edges of imperturbable, impenetrable cloud on all sides—beautiful in
positive color, but totally destitute of that exquisite gradation and
change, that fleeting, panting, hesitating effort, with which the first
glance of the natural sky is shed through the turbulence of the
earth-storm.
They have some excuse, however, for not attempting this, in the nature
of their material, as one accidental dash of the brush with water-color
on a piece of wet or damp paper, will come § 24. Success of our
water-color artists in its rendering. Use of it by Turner.nearer the
truth and transparency of this rain-blue than the labor of a day in
oils; and the purity and felicity of some of the careless, melting
water-color skies of Cox and Tayler may well make us fastidious in all
effects of this kind. It is, however, only in the drawings of Turner
that we have this perfect transparency and variation of blue, given in
association with the perfection of considered form. In Tayler and Cox
the forms are always partially accidental and unconsidered, often
essentially bad, and always incomplete; in Turner the dash of the brush
is as completely under the rule of thought and feeling as its slowest
line; all that it does is perfect, and could not be altered, even in a
hairbreadth, without injury; in addition to this, peculiar management
and execution are used in obtaining quality in the color itself, totally
different from the manipulation of any other artist; and none, who have
ever spent so much as one hour of their lives over his drawing, can
forget those dim passages of dreamy blue, barred and severed with a
thousand delicate and soft and snowy forms, which, gleaming in their
patience of hope between the troubled rushing of the racked earth-cloud,
melt farther and farther back into the height of heaven, until the eye
is bewildered and the heart lost in the intensity of their peace. I do
not say that this is beautiful—I do not say it is ideal, nor refined—I
only ask you to watch for the first opening of the clouds after the next
south rain, and tell me if it be not true?
The Gosport affords us an instance more exquisite even than the passage
above named in the Coventry, of the use of this melting and dewy blue,
accompanied by two distances of rain-cloud, § 25. Expression of near
rain-cloud in the Gosport, and other works.one towering over the
horizon, seen blue with excessive distance through crystal atmosphere;
the other breaking overhead in the warm, sulphurous fragments of spray,
whose loose and shattering transparency, being the most essential
characteristic of the near rain-cloud, is precisely that which the old
masters are sure to contradict. Look, for instance, at the wreaths of
cloud? in the Dido and Æneas of Gaspar Poussin, with their unpleasant
edges cut as hard and solid and opaque and smooth as thick
black paint can § 26. Contrasted with Gaspar Poussin's rain-cloud in the
Dido and Æneas.make them, rolled up over one another like a dirty sail
badly reefed; or look at the agreeable transparency and variety of the
cloud-edge where it cuts the Mountain in N. Poussin's Phocion, and
compare this with the wreaths which float across the precipice in the
second vignette in Campbell, or which gather around the Ben Lomond, the
white rain gleaming beneath their dark transparent shadows; or which
drift up along the flanks of the wooded hills, called from the river by
the morning light, in the Oakhampton; or which island the crags of
Snowdon in the Llanberis, or melt along the Cumberland hills, while
Turner leads us across the sands of Morecambe Bay. This last drawing
deserves especial notice; it is of an evening in spring, when the south
rain has ceased at sunset, and through the lulled and golden air, the
confused and fantastic mists float up along the hollows of the
mountains, white and pure, the resurrection in spirit of the new-fallen
rain, catching shadows from the precipices, and mocking the dark peaks
with their own mountain-like but melting forms till the solid mountains
seem in motion like those waves of cloud, emerging and vanishing as the
weak wind passes by their summits; while the blue, level night advances
along the sea, and the surging breakers leap up to catch the last light
from the path of the sunset.
 |
OKEHAMPTON CASTLE.
From a painting by Turner. |
I need not, however, insist upon Turner's peculiar power of rendering
mist, and all those passages of intermediate mystery, between earth
and air, when the mountain is melting into the § 27. Turner's power of
rendering mist.cloud, or the horizon into the twilight; because his
supremacy in these points is altogether undisputed, except by persons to
whom it would be impossible to prove anything which did not fall under
the form of a Rule of Three. Nothing is more natural than that the
studied form and color of this great artist should be little understood,
because they require for the full perception of their meaning and truth,
such knowledge and such time as not one in a thousand possesses, or can
bestow; but yet the truth of them for that very reason is capable of
demonstration, and there is hope of our being able to make it in some
degree felt and comprehended even by those to whom it is now a dead
letter, or an offence. But the aerial and misty effects of
landscape, being § 28. His effects of mist so perfect, that if not at
once understood, they can no more be explained or reasoned on than
nature herself.matters of which the eye should be simply cognizant, and
without effort of thought, as it is of light, must, where they are
exquisitely rendered, either be felt at once, or prove that degree of
blindness and bluntness in the feelings of the observer which there is
little hope of ever conquering. Of course for persons who have never
seen in their lives a cloud vanishing on a mountain-side, and whose
conceptions of mist or vapor are limited to ambiguous outlines of
spectral hackney-coaches and bodiless lamp-posts, discern through a
brown combination of sulphur, soot, and gaslight, there is yet some
hope; we cannot, indeed, tell them what the morning mist is like in
mountain air, but far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable
of feeling its beauty if they will seek it for themselves. But if you
have ever in your life had one opportunity with your eyes and heart
open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill-pasture, or the storm gather on
a sea-cliff, and if you have yet no feeling for the glorious passages of
mingled earth and heaven which Turner calls up before you into
breathing, tangible being, there is indeed no hope for your apathy—art
will never touch you, nor nature inform.
It would be utterly absurd, among the innumerable passages of this kind
given throughout his works, to point to one as more characteristic or
more perfect than another. The Simmer Lake, § 29. Various instances.near
Askrig, for expression of mist pervaded with sunlight,—the Lake
Lucerne, a recent and unengraved drawing, for the recession of near
mountain form, not into dark, but into luminous cloud, the most
difficult thing to do in art,—the Harlech, for expression of the same
phenomena, shown over vast spaces in distant ranges of hills, the
Ehrenbreitstein, a recent drawing, for expression of mist, rising from
the surface of water at sunset,—and, finally, the glorious Oberwesel
and Nemi,[41] for passages of all united, may, however, be named, as
noble instances, though in naming five works I insult five hundred.
One word respecting Turner's more violent storms, for we
have hitherto been speaking only of the softer rain-clouds, associated
§ 30. Turner's more violent effects of tempest are never rendered by
engravers.with gusty tempest, but not of the thunder-cloud and the
whirlwind. If there be any one point in which engravers disgrace
themselves more than in another, it is in their rendering of dark and
furious storm. It appears to be utterly impossible to force it into
their heads, that an artist does not leave his color with a sharp edge
and an angular form by accident, or that they may have the pleasure of
altering it and improving upon it; and equally impossible to persuade
them that energy and gloom may § 31. General system of landscape
engraving.in some circumstances be arrived at without any
extraordinary expenditure of ink. I am aware of no engraver of the
present day whose ideas of a storm-cloud are not comprised under two
heads, roundness and blackness; and, indeed, their general principles of
translation (as may be distinctly gathered from their larger works) are
the following: 1. Where the drawing is gray, make the paper black. 2.
Where the drawing is white, cover the page with zigzag lines. 3. Where
the drawing has particularly tender tones, cross-hatch them. 4. Where
any outline is particularly angular, make it round. 5. Where there are
vertical reflections in water, express them with very distinct
horizontal lines. 6. Where there is a passage of particular simplicity,
treat it in sections. 7. Where there is anything intentionally
concealed, make it out. Yet, in spite of the necessity which all
engravers impose upon themselves, of rigidly observing this code of
general laws, it is difficult to conceive how such pieces of work, as
the plates of Stonehenge and Winchelsea, can ever have been § 32. The
storm in the Stonehenge.presented to the public, as in any way
resembling, or possessing even the most fanciful relation to the Turner
drawings of the same subjects. The original of the Stonehenge is perhaps
the standard of storm-drawing, both for the overwhelming power and
gigantic proportions and spaces of its cloud-forms, and for the
tremendous qualities of lurid and sulphurous colors which are gained in
them. All its forms are marked with violent angles, as if the whole
muscular energy—so to speak—of the cloud, were writhing in every fold,
and their fantastic and fiery volumes have a peculiar horror—an awful
life—shadowed out in their strange, swift, fearful outlines, which oppress the mind more than even the threatening of their
gigantic gloom. The white lightning, not as it is drawn by less
observant or less capable painters, in zigzag fortifications, but in its
own dreadful irregularity of streaming fire, is brought down, not merely
over the dark clouds, but through the full light of an illumined opening
to the blue, which yet cannot abate the brilliancy of its white line;
and the track of the last flash along the ground is fearfully marked by
the dog howling over the fallen shepherd, and the ewe pressing her head
upon the body of her dead lamb.
I have not space, however, to enter into examination of Turner's
storm-drawing; I can only warn the public against supposing that its
effect is ever rendered by engravers. The § 33. General character of
such effects given by Turner. His expression of falling rain.great
principles of Turner are angular outline, vastness and energy of form,
infinity of gradation, and depth without blackness. The great principles
of the engravers (vide Pæstum, in Rogers's Italy, and the Stonehenge,
above alluded to) are rounded outline, no edges, want of character,
equality of strength, and blackness without depth.
I have scarcely, I see, on referring to what I have written,
sufficiently insisted on Turner's rendering of the rainy fringe,
whether in distances, admitting or concealing more or less of the
extended plain, as in the Waterloo, and Richmond (with the girl and dog
in the foreground,) or as in the Dunstaffnage, Glencoe, St. Michael's
Mount, and Slave Ship, not reaching the earth, but suspended in waving
and twisted lines from the darkness of the zenith. But I have no time
for farther development of particular points; I must defer discussion of
them until we § 34. Recapitulation of the section.take up each picture
to be viewed as a whole; for the division of the sky which I have been
obliged to make, in order to render fully understood the peculiarities
of character in the separate cloud regions, prevents my speaking of any
one work with justice to its concentration of various truth. Be it
always remembered that we pretend not, at present, to give any account
or idea of the sum of the works of any painter, much less of the
universality of Turner's; but only to explain in what real truth, as far
as it is explicable, consists, and to illustrate it by those pictures in
which it most distinctly occurs, or from which it is most
visibly absent. And it will only be in the full and separate discussion
of individual works, when we are acquainted also with what is beautiful,
that we shall be completely able to prove or disprove the presence of
the truth of nature.
The conclusion, then, to which we are led by our present examination of
the truth of clouds, is, that the old masters attempted the
representation of only one among the thousands of their systems of
scenery, and were altogether false in the little they attempted; while
we can find records in modern art of every form or phenomenon of the
heavens, from the highest film that glorifies the ether to the wildest
vapor that darkens the dust, and in all these records we find the most
clear language and close thought, firm words, and true message,
unstinted fulness and unfailing faith.
And indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how, even without such
laborious investigation as we have gone through, any person can go to
nature for a single day or hour, § 35. Sketch of a few of the skies of
nature, taken as a whole, compared with the works of Turner and of the
old masters. Morning on the plains.when she is really at work in any of
her nobler spheres of action, and yet retain respect for the old
masters; finding, as find he will, that every scene which rises, rests,
or departs before him, bears with it a thousand glories of which there
is not one shadow, one image, one trace or line, in any of their works;
but which will illustrate to him, at every new instant, some passage
which he had not before understood in the high works of modern art.
Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the
night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and
lake-like fields as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the
islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn,
colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight;
watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the
foam of their undulating surface parts and passes away; and down under
their depths, the glittering city and green pasture lie like Atlantis,
between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling
every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed
surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges
of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the plain.
Has Claude given § 36. Noon with gathering storms.this? Wait a little
longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines,
and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they couch
in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light,[42] upon the broad
breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt
back and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away,
lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a
wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their
very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep
lake below.[43] Has Claude given this? Wait yet a little longer, and you
shall see those mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand
like fortresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled
with every instant higher and higher into the sky,[44] and casting
longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the
horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark,
pointed vapors,[45] which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their
gray network, and take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which
will stop the singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves
together; and then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming
under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along
the shoulders of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look
back to a place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it,
hanging by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.[46] Has
Claude given this? And then you will hear the sudden rush of the
awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapor swept away
from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to
the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds in black, bending
fringes,[47] or pacing in pale columns along the lake level,
grazing its surface into foam as they go. § 37. Sunset in tempest.
Serene midnight.And then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm
drift for an instant from on the hills, leaving their broad sides
smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white torn, steam-like rags of
capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again;[48] while the
smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball
beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing
wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no
more, dyeing all the air about it with blood.[49] Has Claude given this?
And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the
night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of the
eastern hills,[50] brighter—brighter yet, till the large white circle
of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds,[51] step by step,
line by line; star after star she quenches with her kindling light,
setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in
the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together, hand in
hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of
motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to
reel under them. Ask Claude, or his brethren, for that. And then § 38.
And sunrise on the Alps.wait yet for one hour until the east again
becomes purple,[52] and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in
darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory
of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths
about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the
columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm,
each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen
streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven
snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent
domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with
purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new
glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole
heaven—one scarlet canopy,—is interwoven with a roof of waving flame,
and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many
companies of angels; and then, when you can look no more for gladness,
and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of
this, tell me who has best delivered this His message unto men!
I am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may extend;
perhaps there are no mountains which rise altogether above storm. I have
never been in a violent storm at a greater height than between 8000 and
9000 feet above the level of the sea. There the rain-cloud is
exceedingly light, compared to the ponderous darkness of the lower air.
I ought here, however, to have noted another effect of the
rain-cloud, which, so far as I know, has been rendered only by Copley
Fielding. It is seen chiefly in clouds gathering for rain, when the sky
is entirely covered with a gray veil rippled or waved with pendent
swells of soft texture, but excessively hard and liny in their edges. I
am not sure that this is an agreeable or impressive form of the
rain-cloud, but it is a frequent one, and it is often most faithfully
given by Fielding; only in some cases the edges becoming a little
doubled and harsh have given a look of failure or misadventure to some
even of the best studied passages; and something of the same hardness of
line is occasionally visible in his drawing of clouds by whose nature it
is not warranted.
Compare Sect. I. Chap. IV. § 5.
It does not do so until the volumes lose their density by
inequality of motion, and by the expansion of the warm air which conveys
them. They are then, of course, broken into forms resembling those of
clouds.
No conception can be formed of this picture from the engraving. It
is perhaps the most marvellous piece of execution and of gray color
existing, except perhaps the drawing presently to be noticed, Land's
End. Nothing else can be set beside it, even of Turner's own works—much
less of any other man's.
I know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of
a storm than the smoking of the mountain torrents. The exhausted air
is so thirsty of moisture, that every jet of spray is seized upon by it,
and converted into vapor as it springs; and this vapor rises so densely
from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact appearance of
boiling water. I have seen the whole course of the Arve at Chamonix one
line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen ten or twelve
feet from the surface, but entirely concealing the water from an
observer placed above it.
Note especially the dark uppermost outline of the mass.
In the possession of B. G. Windus, Esq. of Tottenham.
I have often seen the white thin, morning cloud, edged with the
seven colors of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this
phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the
sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefinite
spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The colors are
distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them.
Lake Lucerne.
St. Maurice (Rogers's Italy).
Vignette, the Great St. Bernard.
Vignette of the Andes.
St. Michael's Mount—England series.
Illustration to the Antiquary. Goldeau, a recent drawing of the
highest order.
Vignette to Campbell's Last Man.
Caerlaverock.
St. Denis.
Alps at Daybreak (Rogers's Poems:) Delphi, and various vignettes.
EFFECTS OF LIGHT RENDERED BY MODERN ART.
I have before given my reasons (Sect. II. Chap. III.) for not wishing at
present to enter upon the discussion of particular effects of light. Not
only are we incapable of rightly viewing § 1. Reasons for merely at
present naming, without examining the particular effects of light
rendered by Turner.them, or reasoning upon them, until we are acquainted
with the principles of the beautiful; but, as I distinctly limited
myself, in the present portion of the work, to the examination of
general truths, it would be out of place to take cognizance of the
particular phases of light, even if it were possible to do so, before we
have some more definite knowledge of the material objects which they
illustrate. I shall therefore, at present, merely set down a rough
catalogue of the effects of light at different hours of the day, which
Turner has represented: naming a picture or two, as an example of each,
which we will hereafter take up one by one, and consider the physical
science and the § 2. Hopes of the author for assistance in the future
investigation of them.feeling together. And I do this, in the hope that,
in the mean time, some admirer of the old masters will be kind enough to
select from the works of any one of them, a series of examples of the
same effects, and to give me a reference to the pictures, so that I may
be able to compare each with each; for, as my limited knowledge of the
works of Claude or Poussin does not supply me with the requisite variety
of effect, I shall be grateful for assistance.
The following list, of course, does not name the hundredth part of the
effects of light given by Turner; it only names those which are
distinctly and markedly separate from each other, and representative
each of an entire class. Ten or twelve examples, often many more, might
be given of each; every one of which would display the effects of the
same hour and light, modified by different circumstances of weather,
situation, and character of objects subjected to them, and especially by
the management of the sky; but it will be generally
sufficient for our purposes to examine thoroughly one good example of
each.
The prefixed letters express the direction of the light. F. front light
(the sun in the centre, or near the top of the picture;) L. lateral
light, the sun out of the picture on the right or left of the spectator;
L. F. the light partly lateral, partly fronting the spectator, as when
he is looking south, with the sun in the south-west; L. B. light partly
lateral, partly behind the spectator, as when he is looking north, with
the sun in the south-west.
MORNING.
| effects. |
|
names of pictures. |
| L. |
An hour before sunrise in winter. Violent storm, with rain, on the sea. Light-houses seen through it. |
Lowestoffe, Suffolk. |
| F. |
An hour before sunrise. Serene sky, with light clouds. Dawn in the distance. |
Vignette to Voyage of Columbus. |
| L. |
Ten minutes before sunrise. Violent storm. Torchlight. |
Fowey Harbor. |
| F. |
Sunrise. Sun only half above the horizon. Clear sky, with light cirri. |
Vignette to Human Life. |
| F. |
Sun just disengaged from horizon. Misty, with light cirri. |
Alps at Daybreak. |
| F. |
Sun a quarter of an hour risen. Sky covered with scarlet clouds. |
Castle Upnor. |
| L.F. |
Serene sky. Sun emerging from a bank of cloud on horizon, a quarter of an hour risen. |
Orford, Suffolk. |
| L.F. |
Same hour. Light mists in flakes on hill-sides. Clear air. |
Skiddaw. |
| L.F. |
Light flying rain-clouds gathering in valleys. Same hour. |
Oakhampton. |
| L.B. |
Same hour. A night storm rising off the mountains. Dead calm. |
Lake of Geneva. |
| L. |
Sun half an hour risen. Cloudless sky. |
Beaugency. |
| L. |
Same hour. Light mists lying in the valleys. |
Kirby Lonsdale. |
| F. |
Same hour. Bright cirri. Sun dimly seen through battle smoke, with conflagration. |
Hohenlinden. |
| L. |
Sun an hour risen. Cloudless and clear. |
Buckfastleigh. |
NOON AND AFTERNOON.
| effects. |
|
names of pictures. |
| L.B. |
Midday. Dead calm, with heat. Cloudless. |
Corinth. |
| L. |
Same hour. Serene and bright, with streaky clouds. |
Lantern at St. Cloud. |
| L. |
Same hour. Serene, with multitudes of the high cirrus. |
Shylock, and other Venices. |
| L. |
Bright sun, with light wind and clouds. |
Richmond, Middlesex. |
| F. |
Two o'clock. Clouds gathering for rain, with heat. |
Warwick. Blenheim. |
| F. |
Rain beginning, with light clouds and wind. |
Piacenza. |
| L. |
Soft rain, with heat. |
Caldron Snout Fall. |
| L.F. |
Great heat. Thunder gathering. |
Malvern. |
| L. |
Thunder breaking down, after intense heat, with furious wind. |
Winchelsea. |
| L. |
Violent rain and wind, but cool. |
Llamberis, Coventry, &c. |
| L.F. |
Furious storm, with thunder. |
Stonehenge, Pæstum, &c. |
| L.B. |
Thunder retiring, with rainbow. Dead calm, with heat. |
Nottingham. |
| L. |
About three o'clock, summer. Air very cool and clear. Exhausted thunder-clouds low on hills. |
Bingen. |
| F. |
Descending sunbeams through soft clouds, after rain. |
Carew Castle. |
| L. |
Afternoon, very clear, after rain. A few clouds still on horizon. Dead calm. |
Saltash. |
| F. |
Afternoon of cloudless day, with heat. |
Mercury and Argus. Oberwesel. Nemi. |
EVENING.
| effects. |
|
names of pictures. |
| L. |
An hour before sunset. Cloudless. |
Trematon Castle. |
| F. |
Half an hour before sunset. Light clouds. Misty air. |
Lake Albano. Florence. |
| F. |
Within a quarter of an hour of sunset. Mists rising. Light cirri. |
Dater Hora Quieti. |
| L.F. |
Ten minutes before sunset. Quite cloudless. |
Durham. |
| F. |
Same hour. Tumultuous spray of illumined rain-cloud. |
Solomon's Pools. Slave ship. |
| F. |
Five minutes before sunset. Sky covered with illumined cirri. |
Temeraire. Napoleon. Various vignettes. |
| L.B. |
Same hour. Serene sky. Full moon rising. |
Kenilworth. |
| F. |
Sun setting. Detached light cirri and clear air. |
Amboise. |
| L. |
Same hour. Cloudless. New moon. |
Troyes. |
| L.F. |
Same hour. Heavy storm clouds. Moonrise. |
First vignette. Pleasures of Memory. |
| L.B. |
Sun just set. Sky covered with clouds. New moon setting. |
Caudebec. |
| L.B. |
Sun five minutes set. Strong twilight, with storm clouds. Full moonrise. |
Wilderness of Engedi. Assos. |
| L.B. |
Same hour. Serene, with light clouds. |
Montjan. |
| L.B. |
Same hour. Serene. New moon. |
Pyramid of Caius Cestius. |
| L.B. |
Sun a quarter of an hour set. Cloudless. |
Chateau de Blois. |
| L.F. |
Sun half an hour set. Light cirri. |
Clairmont. |
| F. |
Same hour. Dead calm at sea. New moon and evening star. |
Cowes. |
| F. |
Sun three quarters of an hour set. Moon struggling through storm clouds, over heavy sea. |
Folkestone. |
NIGHT.
| effects. |
|
names of pictures. |
| F. |
An hour after sunset. No moon. Torchlight. |
St. Julien. Tours. |
| F. |
Same hour. Moon rising. Fire from furnaces. |
Dudley. |
| L.F. |
Same hour, with storm clouds. Moon rising. |
Nantes. |
| L. |
Same hour, with light of rockets and fire. |
Juliet and her Nurse. |
| F. |
Midnight. Moonless, with light-houses. Same hour, with fire-light. |
Calais.
Burning of Parliament Houses. |
| F. |
Ditto. Full moon. Clear air, with delicate clouds. Light-houses. |
Towers of the Hevé. |
| F. |
Ditto, with conflagration, battle smoke, and storm. |
Waterloo. |
| F. |
Ditto. Moonlight through mist. Buildings illuminated in interior. |
Vignette. St. Herbert's Isle. |
| F. |
Ditto. Full moon with halo. Light rain-clouds. |
St. Denis. |
| F. |
Full moon. Perfectly serene. Sky covered with white cirri. |
Alnwick. Vignette of Rialto, and Bridge of Sighs. |
OF GENERAL STRUCTURE.
By truth of earth, we mean the faithful representation of the facts and
forms of the bare ground, considered as entirely divested of vegetation,
through whatever disguise, or under whatever § 1. First laws of the
organization of the earth, and their importance in art.modification the
clothing of the landscape may occasion. Ground is to the landscape
painter what the naked human body is to the historical. The growth of
vegetation, the action of water, and even of clouds upon it and around
it, are so far subject and subordinate to its forms, as the folds of the
dress and the fall of the hair are to the modulation of the animal
anatomy. Nor is this anatomy always so concealed, but in all sublime
compositions, whether of nature or art, it must be seen in its naked
purity. The laws of the organization of the earth are distinct and fixed
as those of the animal frame, simpler and broader, but equally
authoritative and inviolable. Their results may be arrived at without
knowledge of the interior mechanism; but for that very reason ignorance
of them is the more disgraceful, and violation of them more
unpardonable. They are in the landscape the foundation of all other
truths—the most necessary, therefore, even if they were not in
themselves attractive; but they are as beautiful as they are essential,
and every abandonment of them by the artist must end in deformity as it
begins in falsehood.
That such abandonment is constant and total in the works of the old
masters, has escaped detection, only because of persons § 2. The slight
attention ordinarily paid to them. Their careful study by modern
artists.generally cognizant of art, few have spent time enough in hill
countries to perceive the certainty of the laws of hill
anatomy; and because few, even of those who possess such opportunities,
ever think of the common earth beneath their feet, as anything
possessing specific form, or governed by steadfast principles. That such
abandonment should have taken place cannot be surprising, after what we
have seen of their fidelity to skies. Those artists who, day after day,
could so falsely represent what was forever before their eyes, when it
was to be one of the most important and attractive parts of their
picture, can scarcely be expected to give with truth what they could see
only partially and at intervals, and what was only to be in their
picture a blue line in the horizon, or a bright spot under the feet of
their figures.
That such should be all the space allotted by the old landscape painters
to the most magnificent phenomena of nature; that the only traces of
those Apennines, which in Claude's walks along the brow of the Pincian,
forever bounded his horizon with their azure wall, should, in his
pictures, be a cold white outline in the extreme of his tame distance;
and that Salvator's sojourns among their fastnesses should only have
taught him to shelter his banditti with such paltry morsels of crag as
an Alpine stream would toss down before it like a foam-globe; though it
may indeed excite our surprise, will, perhaps, when we have seen how
these slight passages are executed, be rather a subject of
congratulation than of regret. It might, indeed, have shortened our
labor in the investigation of mountain truth, had not modern artists
been so vast, comprehensive, and multitudinous in their mountain
drawings, as to compel us, in order to form the slightest estimate of
their knowledge, to enter into some examination of every variety of hill
scenery. We shall first gain some general notion of the broad
organization of large masses, and then take those masses to pieces,
until we come down to the crumbling soil of the foreground.
Mountains are, to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent
muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its
anatomy are, in the § 3. General structure of the earth. The hills are
its action, the plains its rest.mountain, brought out with fierce and
convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains
and the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion
of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the
lines of its beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every undulation.
This, then, is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. The
spirit of the hills is action; that of the lowlands, repose; and between
these there is to be found every variety of motion and of rest; from the
inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to
the fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the
clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their
Titan hands to Heaven, saying, "I live forever!"
But there is this difference between the action of the earth, § 4.
Mountains come out from underneath the plains, and are their support.and
that of a living creature, that while the exerted limb marks its bones
and tendons through the flesh, the excited earth casts off the flesh
altogether, and its bones come out from beneath. Mountains are the bones
of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those parts of its
anatomy which in the plains lie buried under five and twenty thousand
feet of solid thickness of superincumbent soil, and which spring up in
the mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, flinging their garment
of earth away from them on each side. The masses of the lower hills are
laid over and against their sides, like the masses of lateral masonry
against the skeleton arch of an unfinished bridge, except that they
slope up to and lean against the central ridge: and, finally, upon the
slopes of these lower hills are strewed the level beds of sprinkled
gravel, sand, and clay, which form the extent of the champaign. Here
then is another grand principle of the truth of earth, that the
mountains must come from under all, and be the support of all; and that
everything else must be laid in their arms, heap above heap, the plains
being the uppermost. Opposed to this truth is every appearance of the
hills being laid upon the plains, or built upon them. Nor is this a
truth only of the earth on a large scale, for every minor rock (in
position) comes out from the soil about it as an island out of the sea,
lifting the earth near it like waves beating on its sides.
Such being the structure of the framework of the earth, it is next to be
remembered that all soil whatsoever, wherever it is § 5. Structure of
the plains themselves. Their perfect level, when deposited by quiet
water.accumulated in greater quantity than is sufficient to nourish the
moss of the wallflower, has been so, either by the direct transporting
agency of water, or under the guiding influence and power of
water. All plains capable of cultivation are deposits from some kind of
water—some from swift and tremendous currents, leaving their soil in
sweeping banks and furrowed ridges—others, and this is in mountain
districts almost invariably the case, by slow deposit from a quiet lake
in the mountain hollow, which has been gradually filled by the soil
carried into it by streams, which soil is of course finally left spread
at the exact level of the surface of the former lake, as level as the
quiet water itself. Hence we constantly meet with plains in hill
districts, which fill the hollows of the hills with as perfect and
faultless a level as water, and out of which the steep rocks rise at the
edge with as little previous disturbance, or indication of their forms
beneath, as they do from the margin of a quiet lake. Every delta—and
there is one at the head of every lake in every hill-district—supplies
an instance of this. The rocks at Altorf plunge beneath the plain, which
the lake has left, at as sharp an angle as they do into the lake itself
beside the chapel of Tell. The plain of the Arve, at Sallenche, is
terminated so sharply by the hills to the south-east, that I have seen a
man sleeping with his back supported against the mountain, and his legs
stretched on the plain; the slope which supported his back rising 5000
feet above him, and the couch of his legs stretched for five miles
before him. In distant effect these champaigns lie like deep, blue,
undisturbed water, while the mighty hills around them burst out from
beneath, raging and tossing like a tumultuous sea. The valleys of
Meyringen, Interlachen, Altorf, Sallenche, St. Jean de Maurienne; the
great plain of Lombardy itself, as seen from Milan or Padua, under the
Alps, the Euganeans, and the Apennines; and the Campo Felice under
Vesuvius, are a few, out of the thousand instances, which must occur at
once to the mind of every traveller.
Let the reader now open Rogers's Italy, at the seventeenth page, and
look at the vignette which heads it of the battle of Marengo. It needs
no comment. It cannot but carry with it, § 6. Illustrated by Turner's
Marengo.after what has been said, the instant conviction that Turner is
as much of a geologist as he is of a painter. It is a summary of all we
have been saying, and a summary so distinct and clear, that
without any such explanation it must have forced upon the mind the
impression of such facts—of the plunging of the hills underneath the
plain—of the perfect level and repose of this latter laid in their
arms, and of the tumultuous action of the emergent summits.
We find, according to this its internal structure, which, I believe,
with the assistance of Turner, can scarcely now be misunderstood, that
the earth may be considered as divided into three § 7. General divisions
of formation resulting from this arrangement. Plan of
investigation.great classes of formation, which geology has already
named for us. Primary—the rocks, which, though in position lower than
all others, rise to form the central peaks, or interior nuclei of all
mountain ranges. Secondary—the rocks which are laid in beds above
these, and which form the greater proportion of all hill scenery.
Tertiary—the light beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which are strewed
upon the surface of all, forming plains and habitable territory for man.
We shall find it convenient, in examining the truth of art, to adopt,
with a little modification, the geological arrangement, considering
first, the formation and character of the highest or central peaks; then
the general structure of the lower mountains, including in this division
those composed of the various slates which a geologist would call
primary; and, lastly, the minutiæ and most delicate characters of the
beds of these hills, when they are so near as to become foreground
objects, and the structure of the common soil which usually forms the
greater space of an artist's foreground. Hence our task will arrange
itself into three divisions—the investigation of the central mountains,
of the interior mountains, and of the foreground.
OF THE CENTRAL MOUNTAINS.
It does not always follow, because a mountain is the highest of its
group, that it is in reality one of the central range. The § 1. Similar
character of the central peaks in all parts of the world.Jungfrau is
only surpassed in elevation, in the chain of which it is a member, by
the Schreckhorn and Finster-Aarhorn; but it is entirely a secondary
mountain. But the central peaks are usually the highest, and may be
considered as the chief components of all mountain scenery in the snowy
regions. Being composed of the same rocks in all countries, their
external character is the same everywhere. Its chief essential points
are the following.
Their summits are almost invariably either pyramids or wedges. Domes may
be formed by superincumbent snow, or § 2. Their arrangements in pyramids
or wedges, divided by vertical fissures.appear to be formed by the
continuous outline of a sharp ridge seen transversely, with its
precipice to the spectator; but wherever a rock appears, the uppermost
termination of that rock will be a steep edgy ridge, or a sharp point,
very rarely presenting even a gentle slope on any of its sides, but
usually inaccessible unless encumbered with snow.
These pyramids and wedges split vertically, or nearly so, giving smooth
faces of rock, either perpendicular or very steeply inclined, which
appear to be laid against the central wedge or peak, like planks upright
against a wall. The surfaces of these show close parallelism; their
fissures are vertical, and cut them smoothly, like the edges of shaped
planks. Often groups of these planks, if I may so call them, rise higher
than those between them and the central ridge, forming detached ridges
inclining towards the central one. The planks are cut transversely,
sometimes by graceful curvilinear fissures; sometimes by straight
fissures, which are commonly parallel to the slope of one of the sides
of the peak, while the main direction of the planks or
leaves is parallel to that of its other side, or points directly to its
summit. But the universal law of fracture is—first, that it is clean
and sharp, having a perfectly smooth surface, and a perfectly sharp edge
to all the fissures; secondly, that every fissure is steeply inclined,
and that a horizontal line, or one approaching to it, is an
impossibility, except in some turn of a curve.
Hence, however the light may fall, these peaks are seen marked with
sharp and defined shadows, indicating the square § 3. Causing groups of
rock resembling an artichoke or rose.edges of the planks of which they
are made up, which shadows sometimes are vertical, pointing to the
summit; but are oftener parallel to one of the sides of the peak, and
intersected by a second series, parallel to the other side. Where there
has been much disintegration, the peak is often surrounded with groups
of lower ridges or peaks, like the leaves of an artichoke or a rose, all
evidently part and parcel of the great peak; but falling back from it,
as if it were a budding flower, expanding its leaves one by one.
Now, if I were giving a lecture on geology, and were searching for some
means of giving the most faithful idea possible of the external
appearance caused by this structure of the primary § 4. The faithful
statement of these facts by Turner in his Alps at Daybreak.hills, I
should throw my geological outlines aside, and take up Turner's vignette
of the Alps at Daybreak. After what has been said, a single glance at it
will be enough. Observe the exquisite decision with which the edge of
the uppermost plank of the great peak is indicated by its clear dark
side and sharp shadow; then the rise of the second low ridge on its
side, only to descend again precisely in the same line; the two fissures
of this peak, one pointing to its summit, the other rigidly parallel to
the great slope which descends towards the sun; then the sharp white
aiguille on the right, with the great fissure from its summit, rigidly
and severely square, as marked below, where another edge of rock is laid
upon it. But this is not all; the black rock in the foreground is
equally a member of the mass, its chief slope parallel with that of the
mountain, and all its fissures and lines inclined in the same direction;
and, to complete the mass of evidence more forcibly still, we have the
dark mass on the left articulated with absolute right lines, as parallel
as if they had been drawn with a ruler, indicating the tops
of two of these huge plates or planks, pointing, with the universal
tendency, to the great ridge, and intersected by fissures parallel to
it. Throughout the extent of mountain, not one horizontal line, nor an
approach to it, is discernible. This cannot be chance—it cannot be
composition—it may not be beautiful—perhaps nature is very wrong to be
so parallel, and very disagreeable in being so straight;—but this is
nature, whether we admire it or not.
In the vignette illustration to Jacqueline, we have another series of
peaks, whose structure is less developed, owing to their distance, but
equally clear and faithful in all points, as far § 5. Vignette of the
Andes and others.as it is given. But the vignette of Aosta, in Italy, is
perhaps more striking than any that could be named for its rendering of
the perfect parallelism of the lower and smaller peaks with the great
lines of the mass they compose; and that of the Andes, the second in
Campbell, for its indication of the multitudes of the vertical and
plank-like beds arranged almost like the leaves of a flower. This last
especially, one of the very noblest, most faithful, most scientific
statements of mountain form which even Turner has ever made, can leave
little more to be said or doubted.
Now, whenever these vast peaks, rising from 12,000 to 24,000 feet above
the sea, form part of anything like a landscape, that is to say,
whenever the spectator beholds them from the region § 6. Necessary
distance, and consequent aerial effect on all such mountains.of
vegetation, or even from any distance at which it is possible to get
something like a view of their whole mass, they must be at so great a
distance from him as to become aerial and faint in all their details.
Their summits, and all those higher masses of whose character we have
been speaking, can by no possibility be nearer to him than twelve or
fifteen miles; to approach them nearer he must climb—must leave the
region of vegetation, and must confine his view to a part, and that a
very limited one, of the mountain he is ascending. Whenever, therefore,
these mountains are seen over anything like vegetation, or are seen in
mass, they must be in the far distance. Most artists would treat an
horizon fifteen miles off very much as if it were mere air; and though
the greater clearness of the upper air permits the high
summits to be seen with extraordinary distinctness, yet they never can
by any possibility have dark or deep shadows, or intense dark relief
against a light. Clear they may be, but faint they must be, and their
great and prevailing characteristic, as distinguished from other
mountains, is want of apparent solidity. They rise in the morning light
rather like sharp shades, cast up into the sky, than solid earth. Their
lights are pure, roseate, and cloud-like—their shadows transparent,
pale, and opalescent, and often indistinguishable from the air around
them, so that the mountain-top is seen in the heaven only by its flakes
of motionless fire.
Now, let me once more ask, though I am sufficiently tired of asking,
what record have we of anything like this in the works of the old
masters? There is no vestige in any existing picture § 7. Total want of
any rendering of their phenomena in ancient art.of the slightest effort
to represent the high hill ranges; and as for such drawing of their
forms as we have found in Turner, we might as well look for them among
the Chinese. Very possibly it may be all quite right,—very probably
these men showed the most cultivated taste, the most unerring judgment,
in filling their pictures with mole-hills and sand-heaps. Very probably
the withered and poisonous banks of Avernus, and the sand and cinders of
the Campagna, are much more sublime things than the Alps; but still what
limited truth it is, if truth it be, when through the last fifty pages
we have been pointing out fact after fact, scene after scene, in clouds
and hills, (and not individual facts nor scenes, but great and important
classes of them,) and still we have nothing to say when we come to the
old masters; but, "they are not here." Yet this is what we hear so
constantly called painting "general" nature.
Although, however, there is no vestige among the old masters of any
effort to represent the attributes of the higher mountains seen in
comparative proximity, we are not altogether left without § 8. Character
of the representations of Alps in the distances of Claude.evidence of
their having thought of them as sources of light in the extreme
distance, as for example, in that of the reputed Claude in our National
Gallery, called the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca. I have not the
slightest doubt of its being a most execrable copy; for there is not one
touch nor line of even decent painting in the whole picture;
but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as it has been put in
our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it every day for a
Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities of Claude in it
which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none
of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I have so reasoned,
and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts
of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist. In the
distance of that picture (as well as in that of the Sinon before Priam,
which I have little doubt is at least partially original, and whose
central group of trees is a very noble piece of painting) is something
white, which I believe must be intended for a snowy mountain, because I
do not see that it § 9. Their total want of magnitude and aerial
distance.can well be intended for anything else. Now no mountain of
elevation sufficient to be so sheeted with perpetual snow, can by any
possibility sink so low on the horizon as this something of Claude's,
unless it be at a distance of from fifty to seventy miles. At such
distances, though the outline is invariably sharp and edgy to an excess,
yet all the circumstances of aerial perspective, faintness of shadow,
and isolation of light, which I have described as characteristic of the
Alps fifteen miles off, take place, of course, in a threefold degree;
the mountains rise from the horizon like transparent films, only
distinguishable from mist by their excessively keen edges, and their
brilliant flashes of sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air
itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerialness, in
a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering
above the spectator's head. Now, I ask of the candid observer, if there
be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain—if there be the most
miserable, the most contemptible shadow of attainment of such an effect
by Claude? Does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off?
Is it faint, or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be
found out? Does it look high? does it look large? does it look
impressive? You cannot but feel that there is not a vestige of any kind
or species of truth in that horizon; and that, however artistical it may
be, as giving brilliancy to the distance, (though, as far as I have any
feeling in the matter, it only gives coldness,) it is, in the very
branch of art on which Claude's reputation chiefly rests,
aerial perspective, hurling defiance to nature in her very teeth.
But there are worse failures yet in this unlucky distance. Aerial
perspective is not a matter of paramount importance, because nature
infringes its laws herself and boldly too, though § 10. And violation of
specific form.never in a case like this before us; but there are some
laws which nature never violates—her laws of form. No mountain was ever
raised to the level of perpetual snow, without an infinite multiplicity
of form. Its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and, from
these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak.
There is no exception to this rule; no mountain 15,000 feet high is ever
raised without such preparation and variety of outwork. Consequently, in
distant effect, when chains of such peaks are visible at once, the
multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and though it is possible in
near scenes to find vast and simple masses composed of lines which run
unbroken for a thousand feet, or more, it is physically impossible when
these masses are thrown seventy miles back, to have simple outlines, for
then these large features become mere jags, and hillocks, and are heaped
and huddled together with endless confusion. To get a simple form,
seventy miles away, mountain lines would be required unbroken for
leagues; and this, I repeat, is physically impossible. Hence these
mountains of Claude, having no indication of the steep vertical summits
which we have shown to be the characteristic of the central ridges,
having soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms (one line to
the plain on each side) instead of varied and broken ones, and being
painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess,
nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery which
invariably characterizes the distant snows, have the forms and the
colors of heaps of chalk in a lime-kiln, not of Alps. They are destitute
of energy, of height, of distance, of splendor, and of variety, and are
the work of a man, whether Claude or not, who had neither feeling for
nature, nor knowledge of art.
I should not, however, insist upon the faults of this picture, § 11.
Even in his best works.believing it to be a copy, if I had ever seen,
even in his most genuine works, an extreme distance of Claude with any
of the essential characters of nature. But although in his
better pictures we have always beautiful drawing of the air, which in
the copy before us is entirely wanting, the real features of the extreme
mountain distance are equally neglected or maligned in all. There is,
indeed, air between us and it; but ten miles, not seventy miles, of
space. Let us observe a little more closely the practice of nature in
such cases.
The multiplicity of form which I have shown to be necessary in the
outline, is not less felt in the body of the mass. For, in all extensive hill ranges,
there are five or six lateral chains separated § 12. Farther
illustration of the distant character of mountain chains.by deep
valleys, which rise between the spectator and the central ridge, showing
their tops one over another, wave beyond wave, until the eye is carried
back to the faintest and highest forms of the principal chain. These
successive ridges, and I speak now not merely of the Alps, but of
mountains generally, even as low as 3000 feet above the sea, show
themselves in extreme distance merely as vertical shades, with very
sharp outlines, detached from one another by greater intensity,
according to their nearness. It is with the utmost difficulty that the
eye can discern any solidity or roundness in them; the lights and shades
of solid form are both equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and
the mountain tells only as a flat, sharp-edged film, of which multitudes
intersect and overtop one another, separated by the greater faintness of
the retiring masses. This is the most simple and easily imitated
arrangement possible, and yet, both in nature and art, it expresses
distance and size in a way otherwise quite unattainable. For thus, the
whole mass of one mountain being of one shade only, the smallest
possible difference in shade will serve completely to detach it from
another, and thus ten or twelve distances may be made evident, when the
darkest and nearest is an aerial gray as faint as the sky; and the
beauty of such arrangements carried out as nature carries them, to their
highest degree, is, perhaps, the most striking feature connected with
hill scenery: you will never, by any chance, § 13. Their excessive
appearance of transparency.perceive in extreme distance, anything like
solid form or projection of the hills. Each is a dead, flat,
perpendicular film or shade, with a sharp edge darkest at the summit,
and lost as it descends, and about equally dark whether turned towards
the light or from it; and of these successive films of
mountain you will probably have half a dozen, one behind another, all
showing with perfect clearness their every chasm and peak in the
outline, and not one of them showing the slightest vestige of solidity,
but on the contrary, looking so thoroughly transparent, that if it so
happens, as I have seen frequently, that a conical near hill meets with
its summit the separation of two distant ones, so that the right-hand
slope of the nearer hill forms an apparent continuation of the
right-hand slope of the left-hand farther hill, and vice versa, it is
impossible to get rid of the impression that one or the more distant
peaks is seen through the other.
I may point out in illustration of these facts, the engravings of two
drawings of precisely the same chain of distant hills,—Stanfield's
§ 14. Illustrated from the works of Turner and Stanfield. The Borromean
Islands of the latter.Borromean Islands, with the St. Gothard in the
distance, and Turner's Arona, also with the St. Gothard in the distance.
Far be it from me to indicate the former of these plates as in any way
exemplifying the power of Stanfield, or affecting his reputation; it is
an unlucky drawing, murdered by the engraver, and as far from being
characteristic of Stanfield as it is from being like nature, but it is
just what I want, to illustrate the particular error of which I speak;
and I prefer showing this error where it accidentally exists in the
works of a really great artist, standing there alone, to point it out
where it is confused with other faults and falsehoods in the works of
inferior hands. The former of these plates is an example of everything
which a hill distance is not, and the latter of everything which it is.
In the former, we have the mountains covered with patchy lights, which
being of equal intensity whether near or distant, confuse all the
distances together; while the eye, perceiving that the light falls so as
to give details of solid form, yet finding nothing but insipid and
formless spaces displayed by it, is compelled to suppose that the whole
body of the hill is equally monotonous and devoid of character; and the
effect upon it is not one whit more impressive and agreeable than might
be received from a group of sand-heaps, washed into uniformity by recent
rain.
Compare with this the distance of Turner in Arona. It is
totally impossible here to say which way the light falls on the § 15.
Turner's Arona.distant hills, except by the slightly increased decision
of their edges turned towards it, but the greatest attention is paid to
get these edges decisive, yet full of gradation, and perfectly true in
character of form. All the rest of the mountain is then
indistinguishable haze, and by the bringing of these edges more and more
decisively over one another, Turner has given us between the right-hand
side of the picture and the snow, fifteen distinct distances, yet every
one of these distances in itself palpitating, changeful, and suggesting
subdivision into countless multitude. Something of this is traceable
even in the engraving, and all the essential characters are perfectly
well marked. I think even the least experienced eye can scarcely but
feel the truth of this distance as compared with Stanfield's. In the
latter, the eye gets something of the form, and therefore wonders it
sees no more; the impression on it, therefore, is of hills within
distinctly visible distance, indiscernible through want of light or dim
atmosphere; and the effect is, of course, smallness of space, with
obscurity of light and thickness of air. In Turner's the eye gets
nothing of the substance, and wonders it sees so much of the outline;
the impression is, therefore, of mountains too far off to be ever
distinctly seen, rendered clear by brilliancy of light and purity of
atmosphere; and the effect, consequently, vastness of space, with
intensity of light and crystalline transparency of air.
These truths are invariably given in every one of Turner's distances,
that is to say, we have always in them two principal § 16. Extreme
distance of large objects always characterized by very sharp
outline.facts forced on our notice; transparency, or filminess of mass,
and excessive sharpness of edge. And I wish particularly to insist upon
this sharpness of edge, because it is not a casual or changeful habit of
nature; it is the unfailing characteristic of all very great distances.
It is quite a mistake to suppose that slurred or melting lines are
characteristic of distant large objects; they may be so, as before
observed, (Sec. II. Chap. IV. § 4,) when the focus of the eye is not
adapted to them; but, when the eye is really directed to the distance,
melting lines are characteristic only of thick mist and vapor between us
and the object, not of the removal of the object. If a thing has
character upon its outline, as a tree for instance, or a
mossy stone, the farther it is removed from us, the sharper the outline
of the whole mass will become, though in doing so, the particular
details which make up the character will become confused in the manner
described in the same chapter. A tree fifty yards from us, taken as a
mass, has a soft outline, because the leaves and interstices have some
effect on the eye. But put it ten miles off against the sky, and its
outline will be so sharp that you cannot tell it from a rock. There are
three trees on the Mont Saleve, about five miles from Geneva, which from
the city, as they stand on the ridge of the hill, are seen defined
against the sky. The keenest eye in the world could not tell them from
stones. So in a mountain five or six miles off, bushes, and heather, and
roughnesses of knotty ground and rock, have still some effect on the
eye, and by becoming confused and mingled as before described, soften
the outline. But let the mountain be thirty miles off, and its edge will
be as sharp as a knife. Let it, as in the case of the Alps, be seventy
or eighty miles off, and though it has become so faint that the morning
mist is not so transparent, its outline will be beyond all imitation for
excessive sharpness. Thus, then, the character of extreme distance is
always excessive keenness of edge. If you soften your outline, you
either put mist between you and the object, and in doing so diminish,
your distance, for it is impossible you should see so far through mist
as through clear air; or, if you keep an impression of clear air, you
bring the object close to the observer, diminish its size in proportion,
and if the aerial colors, excessive blues, etc., be retained, represent
an impossibility.
Take Claude's distance (in No. 244, Dulwich Gallery,)[53] on §17. Want
of this decision in Claude.the right of the picture. It is as pure blue
as ever came from the pallet, laid on thick; you cannot see through it,
there is not the slightest vestige of transparency or filminess about
it, and its edge is soft and blunt. Hence, if it be meant for near
hills, the blue is impossible, and the want of details impossible, in
the clear atmosphere indicated through the whole picture. If it be meant
for extreme distance, the blunt edge is impossible, and the
opacity is impossible. I do not know a single distance of the Italian
school to which the same observation is not entirely applicable, except,
perhaps, one or two of Nicholas Poussin's. They always involve, under
any supposition whatsoever, at least two impossibilities.
I need scarcely mention in particular any more of the works of Turner,
because there is not one of his mountain distances in § 18. The
perpetual rendering of it by Turner.which these facts are not fully
exemplified. Look at the last vignette—the Farewell, in Rogers's Italy;
observe the excessive sharpness of all the edges, almost amounting to
lines, in the distance, while there is scarcely one decisive edge in the
foreground. Look at the hills of the distance in the Dunstaffnage,
Glencoe, and Loch Achray, (illustrations to Scott,) in the latter of
which the left-hand side of the Benvenue is actually marked with a dark
line. In fact, Turner's usual mode of executing these passages is
perfectly evident in all his drawings; it is not often that we meet with
a very broad dash of wet color in his finished works, but in these
distances, as we before saw of his shadows, all the effect has been
evidently given by a dash of very moist pale color, probably turning the
paper upside down, so that a very firm edge may be left at the top of
the mountain as the color dries. And in the Battle of Marengo we find
the principle carried so far as to give nothing more than actual outline
for the representation of the extreme distance, while all the other
hills in the picture are distinctly darkest at the edge. This plate,
though coarsely executed, is yet one of the noblest illustrations of
mountain character and magnitude existing.
Such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest peaks and
extreme distances of all hills, as far as the forms of the § 19. Effects
of snow, how imperfectly studied.rocks themselves, and the aerial
appearances especially belonging to them, are alone concerned. There is,
however, yet another point to be considered—the modification of their
form caused by incumbent snow.
Pictures of winter scenery are nearly as common as moonlights, and are
usually executed by the same order of artists, that is to say, the most
incapable; it being remarkably easy to represent the moon as a white
wafer on a black ground, or to scratch out white branches on
a cloudy sky. Nevertheless, among Flemish paintings several valuable
representations of winter are to be found, and some clever pieces of
effect among the moderns, as Hunt's, for instance, and De Wint's. But
all such efforts end in effect alone, nor have I ever in any single
instance seen a snow wreath, I do not say thoroughly, but even
decently, drawn.
In the range of inorganic nature, I doubt if any object can be found
more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen under warm
light.[54] Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness,
its surface and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade of
inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale,
and of heavenly color, the reflected lights intense and multitudinous,
and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light. No mortal
hand can approach the majesty or loveliness of it, yet it is possible by
care and skill at least to suggest the preciousness of its forms and
intimate the nature of its light and shade; but this has never been
attempted; it could not be done except by artists of a rank exceedingly
high, and there is something about the feeling of snow in ordinary
scenery which such men do not like. But when the same qualities are
exhibited on a magnificent Alpine scale and in a position where they
interfere with no feeling of life, I see not why they should be
neglected, as they have hitherto been, unless that the difficulty of
reconciling the brilliancy of snow with a picturesque light and shade,
is so great that most good artists disguise or avoid the greater part of
upper Alpine scenery, and hint at the glacier so slightly, that they do
not feel the necessity of careful study of its forms. Habits of
exaggeration increase the evil: I have seen a sketch from nature, by one
of the most able of our landscape painters, in which a cloud had been
mistaken for a snowy summit, and the hint thus taken exaggerated, as was
likely, into an enormous mass of impossible height, and unintelligent
form, when the mountain itself, for which the cloud had been mistaken,
though subtending an angle of about eighteen or twenty degrees, instead
of the fifty attributed to it, was of a form so exquisite that it might have been a profitable lesson truly studied to Phidias.
Nothing but failure can result from such methods of sketching, nor have
I ever seen a single instance of an earnest study of snowy mountains by
any one. Hence, wherever they are introduced, their drawing is utterly
unintelligent, the forms being those of white rocks, or of rocks lightly
powdered with snow, showing sufficiently that not only the painters have
never studied the mountain carefully from below, but that they have
never climbed into the snowy region. Harding's rendering of the high
Alps (vide the engraving of Chamonix, and of the Wengern Alp, in the
illustrations to Byron) is best; but even he shows no perception of the
real anatomy. Stanfield paints only white rocks instead of snow. Turner
invariably avoids the difficulty, though he has shown himself capable of
grappling with it in the ice of the Liber Studiorum, (Mer de Glace,)
which is very cold and slippery and very like ice; but of the crusts and
wreaths of the higher snow he has taken no cognizance. Even the
vignettes to Rogers's Poems fail in this respect. It would be vain to
attempt in this place to give any detailed account of the phenomena of
the upper snows; but it may be well to note those general principles
which every artist ought to keep in mind when he has to paint an Alp.
Snow is modified by the under forms of the hill in some sort, as dress
is by the anatomy of the human frame. § 20. General principles of its
forms on the Alps.And as no dress can be well laid on without conceiving
the body beneath, so no Alp can be drawn unless its under form is
conceived first, and its snow laid on afterwards.
Every high Alp has as much snow upon it as it can hold or carry. It is
not, observe, a mere coating of snow of given depth throughout, but it
is snow loaded on until the rocks can hold no more. The surplus does not
fall in the winter, because, fastened by continual frost, the quantity
of snow which an Alp can carry is greater than each single winter can
bestow; it falls in the first mild days of spring in enormous
avalanches. Afterwards the melting continues, gradually removing from
all the steep rocks the small quantity of snow which was all they could
hold, and leaving them black and bare among the accumulated fields of
unknown depth, which occupy the capacious valleys and less
inclined superfices of the mountain.
Hence it follows that the deepest snow does not take nor indicate the
actual forms of the rocks on which it lies, but it hangs from peak to
peak in unbroken and sweeping festoons, or covers whole groups of peaks,
which afford it sufficient hold, with vast and unbroken domes: these
festoons and domes being guided in their curves, and modified in size,
by the violence and prevalent direction of the winter winds.
We have, therefore, every variety of indication of the under mountain
form; first, the mere coating, which is soon to be withdrawn, and which
shows as a mere sprinkling or powdering after a storm on the higher
peaks; then the shallow incrustation on the steep sides glazed by the
running down of its frequent meltings, frozen again in the night; then
the deep snow more or less cramped or modified by sudden eminences of
emergent rock, or hanging in fractured festoons and huge blue irregular
cliffs on the mountain flanks, and over the edges and summits of their
precipices in nodding drifts, far overhanging, like a cornice, (perilous
things to approach the edge of from above;) finally, the pure
accumulation of overwhelming depth, smooth, sweeping, and almost
cleftless, and modified only by its lines of drifting. Countless
phenomena of exquisite beauty belong to each of these conditions, not to
speak of the transition of the snow into ice at lower levels; but all on
which I shall at present insist is that the artist should not think of
his Alp merely as a white mountain, but conceive it as a group of peaks
loaded with an accumulation of snow, and that especially he should avail
himself of the exquisite curvatures, never failing, by which the snow
unites and opposes the harsh and broken lines of the rock. I shall enter
into farther detail on this subject hereafter; at present it is useless
to do so, as I have no examples to refer to, either in ancient or modern
art. No statement of these facts has hitherto been made, nor any
evidence given even of their observation, except by the most inferior
painters.[55]
Various works in green and white appear from time to time on
the walls of the Academy, like the Alps indeed, but so frightfully
like, that we shudder and sicken at the sight of them, as § 21. Average
paintings of Switzerland. Its real spirit has scarcely yet been
caught.we do when our best friend shows us into his dining-room, to see
a portrait of himself, which "everybody thinks very like." We should be
glad to see fewer of these, for Switzerland is quite beyond the power of
any but first-rate men, and is exceedingly bad practice for a rising
artist; but, let us express a hope that Alpine scenery will not continue
to be neglected as it has been, by those who alone are capable of
treating it. We love Italy, but we have had rather a surfeit of it
lately;—too many peaked caps and flat-headed pines. We should be very
grateful to Harding and Stanfield if they would refresh us a little
among the snow, and give us, what we believe them to be capable of
giving us, a faithful expression of Alpine ideal. We are well aware of
the pain inflicted on an artist's mind by the preponderance of black,
and white, and green, over more available colors; but there is
nevertheless in generic Alpine scenery, a fountain of feeling yet
unopened—a chord of harmony yet untouched by art. It will be struck by
the first man who can separate what is national, in Switzerland, from
what is ideal. We do not want chalets and three-legged stools, cow-bells
and buttermilk. We want the pure and holy hills, treated as a link
between heaven and earth.
One of the most genuine Claudes I know.
Compare Part III. Sect. I. Chap. 9, § 5.
I hear of some study of Alpine scenery among the professors at
Geneva; but all foreign landscape that I have ever met with has been so
utterly ignorant that I hope for nothing except from our own painters.
OF THE INFERIOR MOUNTAINS.
We have next to investigate the character of those intermediate masses
which constitute the greater part of § 1. The inferior mountains are
distinguished from the central by being divided into beds.all hill
scenery, forming the outworks of the high ranges, and being almost the
sole constituents of such lower groups as those of Cumberland, Scotland,
or South Italy.
All mountains whatsoever, not composed of the granite or gneiss rocks
described in the preceding chapter, nor volcanic, (these latter being
comparatively rare,) are composed of beds, not of homogeneous, heaped
materials, but of accumulated layers, whether of rock or soil. It may be
slate, sandstone, limestone, gravel, or clay; but whatever the
substance, it is laid in layers, not in a mass. These layers are
scarcely ever horizontal, and may slope to any degree, often occurring
vertical, the boldness of the hill outline commonly depending in a great
degree on their inclination. In consequence of this division into beds,
every mountain will have two great sets of lines more or less prevailing
in its contours—one indicative of the surfaces of the beds, where they
come out from under each other—and the other indicative of the
extremities or edges of the beds, where their continuity has been
interrupted. And these two great sets of lines will commonly be at right
angles with each other, or nearly so. If the surface of the bed approach
a horizontal line, its termination will approach the vertical, and this
is the most usual and ordinary way in which a precipice is produced.
Farther, in almost all rocks there is a third division of substance,
§ 2. Farther division of these beds by joints.which gives to their beds
a tendency to split transversely in some directions rather than others,
giving rise to what geologists call "joints," and throwing the whole
rock into blocks more or less rhomboidal; so that the beds are not
terminated by torn or ragged edges, but by faces comparatively smooth
and even, usually inclined to each other at some definite
angle. The whole arrangement may be tolerably represented by the bricks
of a wall, whose tiers may be considered as strata, and whose sides and
extremities will represent the joints by which those strata are divided,
varying, however, their direction in different rocks, and in the same
rock under differing circumstances.
Finally, in the slates, grauwackes, and some calcareous beds, in the
greater number, indeed, of mountain rocks, we find § 3. And by lines
of lamination.another most conspicuous feature of general structure—the
lines of lamination, which divide the whole rock into an infinite number
of delicate plates or layers, sometimes parallel to the direction or
"strike" of the strata, oftener obliquely crossing it, and sometimes,
apparently, altogether independent of it, maintaining a consistent and
unvarying slope through a series of beds contorted and undulating in
every conceivable direction. These lines of lamination extend their
influence to the smallest fragment, causing it (as, for example, common
roofing slate) to break smooth in one direction, and with a ragged edge
in another, and marking the faces of the beds and joints with distinct
and numberless lines, commonly far more conspicuous in a near view than
the larger and more important divisions.
Now, it cannot be too carefully held in mind, in examining the
principles of mountain structure, that nearly all the laws of § 4.
Variety and seeming uncertainty under which these laws are
manifested.nature with respect to external form are rather universal
tendencies, evidenced by a plurality of instances, than imperative
necessities complied with by all. For instance, it may be said to be a
universal law with respect to the boughs of all trees that they incline
their extremities more to the ground in proportion as they are lower on
the trunk, and that the higher their point of insertion is, the more
they share in the upward tendency of the trunk itself. But yet there is
not a single group of boughs in any one tree which does not show
exceptions to the rule, and present boughs lower in insertion, and yet
steeper in inclination, than their neighbors. Nor is this defect or
deformity, but the result of the constant habit of nature to carry
variety into her very principles, and make the symmetry and beauty of
her laws the more felt by the grace and accidentalism with which they
are carried out. No one familiar with foliage could doubt
for an instant of the necessity of giving evidence of this downward
tendency in the boughs; but it would be nearly as great an offence
against truth to make the law hold good with every individual branch, as
not to exhibit its influence on the majority. Now, though the laws of
mountain form are more rigid and constant than those of vegetation, they
are subject to the same species of exception in carrying out. Though
every mountain has these great tendencies in its lines, not one in a
thousand of those lines is absolutely consistent with and obedient to
this universal tendency. There are lines in every direction, and of
almost every kind, but the sum and aggregate of those lines will
invariably indicate the universal force and influence to which they
are all subjected; and of these lines there will, I repeat, be two
principal sets or classes, pretty nearly at right angles with each
other. When both are inclined, they give rise to peaks or ridges; when
one is nearly horizontal and the other vertical, to table-lands and
precipices.
This then is the broad organization of all hills, modified afterwards by
time and weather, concealed by superincumbent soil and vegetation, and
ramified into minor and more delicate details in a way presently to be
considered, but nevertheless universal in its great first influence, and
giving to all mountains a particular cast and inclination; like the
exertion of voluntary power in a definite direction, an internal spirit,
manifesting itself in every crag, and breathing in every slope, flinging
and forcing the mighty mass towards the heaven with an expression and an
energy like that of life.
Now, as in the case of the structure of the central peaks described
above, so also here, if I had to give a clear idea of this organization
of the lower hills, where it is seen in its greatest § 5. The perfect
expression of them in Turner's Loch Coriskin.perfection, with a mere
view to geological truth, I should not refer to any geological drawings,
but I should take the Loch Coriskin of Turner. It has luckily been
admirably engraved, and for all purposes of reasoning or form, is nearly
as effective in the print as in the drawing. Looking at any group of the
multitudinous lines which make up this mass of mountain, they appear to
be running anywhere and everywhere; there are none parallel to each
other, none resembling each other for a moment; yet the
whole mass is felt at once to be composed with the most rigid
parallelism, the surfaces of the beds towards the left, their edges or
escarpments towards the right. In the centre, near the top of the ridge,
the edge of a bed is beautifully defined, casting its shadow on the
surface of the one beneath it; this shadow marking by three jags the
chasms caused in the inferior one by three of its parallel joints. Every
peak in the distance is evidently subject to the same great influence,
and the evidence is completed by the flatness and evenness of the steep
surfaces of the beds which rise out of the lake on the extreme right,
parallel with those in the centre.
Turn to Glencoe, in the same series (the Illustrations to Scott). We
have in the mass of mountain on the left, the most beautiful § 6.
Glencoe and other works.indication of vertical beds of a finely
laminated rock, terminated by even joints towards the precipice; while
the whole sweep of the landscape, as far as the most distant peaks, is
evidently governed by one great and simple tendency upwards to the left,
those most distant peaks themselves lying over one another in the same
direction. In the Daphne hunting with Leucippus, the mountains on the
left descend in two precipices to the plain, each of which is formed by
a vast escarpment of the beds whose upper surfaces are shown between the
two cliffs, sinking with an even slope from the summit of the lowest to
the base of the highest, under which they evidently descend, being
exposed in this manner for a length of five or six miles. The same
structure is shown, though with more complicated development, on the
left of the Loch Katrine. § 7. Especially the Mount Lebanon.But perhaps
the finest instance, or at least the most marked of all, will be found
in the exquisite Mount Lebanon, with the convent of St. Antonio,
engraved in Finden's Bible. There is not one shade nor touch on the rock
which is not indicative of the lines of stratification; and every
fracture is marked with a straightforward simplicity which makes you
feel that the artist has nothing in his heart but a keen love of the
pure unmodified truth; there is no effort to disguise the repetition of
forms, no apparent aim at artificial arrangement or scientific grouping;
the rocks are laid one above another with unhesitating decision; every
shade is understood in a moment, felt as a dark side, or a shadow, or a
fissure, and you may step from one block or bed to another
until you reach the mountain summit. And yet, though there seems no
effort to disguise the repetition of forms, see how it is disguised,
just as nature would have done it, by the perpetual play and
changefulness of the very lines which appear so parallel; now bending a
little up, or down, or losing themselves, or running into each other,
the old story over and over again,—infinity. For here is still the
great distinction between Turner's work and that of a common artist.
Hundreds could have given the parallelism of blocks, but none but
himself could have done so without the actual repetition of a single
line or feature.
Now compare with this the second mountain from the left in the picture
of Salvator, No. 220 in the Dulwich Gallery. The whole is first laid in
with a very delicate and masterly gray, § 8. Compared with the work of
Salvator;right in tone, agreeable in color, quite unobjectionable for a
beginning. But how is this made into rock? On the light side Salvator
gives us a multitude of touches, all exactly like one another, and
therefore, it is to be hoped, quite patterns of perfection in
rock-drawing, since they are too good to be even varied. Every touch is
a dash of the brush, as nearly as possible in the shape of a comma,
round and bright at the top, convex on its right side, concave on its
left, and melting off at the bottom into the gray. These are laid in
confusion one above another, some paler, some brighter, some scarcely
discernible, but all alike in shape. Now, I am not aware myself of any
particular object, either in earth or heaven, which these said touches
do at all resemble or portray. I do not, however, assert that they may
not resemble something—feathers, perhaps; but I do say, and say with
perfect confidence, that they may be Chinese for rocks, or Sanscrit for
rocks, or symbolical of rocks in some mysterious and undeveloped
character; but that they are no more like rocks than the brush that
made them. The dark sides appear to embrace and overhang the lights;
they cast no shadows, are broken by no fissures, and furnish, as food
for contemplation, nothing but a series of concave curves.
Yet if we go on to No. 269, we shall find something a great deal worse.
I can believe Gaspar Poussin capable of committing as much sin against
nature as most people; but I certainly do not suspect him of
having had any hand in this thing, at least § 9. And of Poussin.after he
was ten years old. Nevertheless, it shows what he is supposed capable of
by his admirers, and will serve for a broad illustration of all those
absurdities which he himself in a less degree, and with feeling and
thought to atone for them, perpetually commits. Take the white bit of
rock on the opposite side of the river, just above the right arm of the
Niobe, and tell me of what the square green daubs of the brush at its
base can be conjectured to be typical. Rocks with pale-brown light
sides, and rich green dark sides, are a phenomenon perhaps occurring in
some of the improved passages of nature among our Cumberland lakes;
where I remember once having seen a bed of roses, of peculiar
magnificence, tastefully and artistically assisted in effect by the
rocks above it being painted pink to match; but I do not think that they
are a kind of thing which the clumsiness and false taste of nature can
be supposed frequently to produce; even granting that these same sweeps
of the brush could, by any exercise of the imagination, be conceived
representative of a dark, or any other side, which is far more than I am
inclined to grant; seeing that there is no east shadow, no appearance of
reflected light, of substance, or of character on the edge; nothing, in
short, but pure, staring green paint, scratched heavily on a white
ground. Nor is there a touch in the picture more expressive. All are the
mere dragging of the brush here and there and everywhere, without
meaning or intention; winding, twisting, zigzagging, doing anything in
fact which may serve to break up the light and destroy its breadth,
without bestowing in return one hint or shadow of anything like form.
This picture is, indeed, an extraordinary case, but the Salvator above
mentioned is a characteristic and exceedingly favorable example of the
usual mode of mountain drawing among the old landscape painters.[56]
Their admirers may be challenged to bring forward a single instance of
their expressing, or even appearing to have noted, the great laws of
structure above explained. Their hills are, without exception, irregular
earthy heaps, without energy or direction of any kind,
marked with shapeless shadows and meaningless lines; sometimes, indeed,
where great sublimity has been aimed at, approximating to the pure and
exalted ideal of rocks, which, in the most artistical specimens of China
cups and plates, we see suspended from aerial pagodas, or balanced upon
peacocks' tails, but never warranting even the wildest theorist in the
conjecture that their perpetrators had ever seen a mountain in their
lives. Let us, however, look farther into the modifications of character
by which nature conceals the regularity of her first plan; for although
all mountains are organized as we have seen, their organization is
always modified, and often nearly concealed, by changes wrought upon
them by external influence.
We ought, when speaking of their stratification, to have noticed another
great law, which must, however, be understood with greater latitude of
application than any of the others, as § 10. Effects of external
influence on mountain form.very far from imperative or constant in
particular cases, though universal in its influence on the aggregate of
all. It is that the lines by which rocks are terminated, are always
steeper and more inclined to the vertical as we approach the summit of
the mountain. Thousands of cases are to be found in every group, of
rocks and lines horizontal at the top of the mountain and vertical at
the bottom; but they are still the exceptions, and the average out of a
given number of lines in any rock formation whatsoever, will be found
increasing in perpendicularity as they rise. Consequently the great
skeleton lines of rock outline are always concave; that is to say, all
distant ranges of rocky mountain approximate more or less to a series of
concave curves, meeting in peaks, like a range of posts with chains
hanging between. I do not say that convex forms will not perpetually
occur, but that the tendency of the majority will always be to assume
the form of sweeping, curved valleys, with angular peaks; not of rounded
convex summits, with angular valleys. This structure is admirably
exemplified in the second vignette in Rogers's Italy, and in Piacenza.
But although this is the primary form of all hills, and that which will
always cut against the sky in every distant range, there are two great
influences whose tendency is directly the reverse, § 11. The
gentle convexity caused by aqueous erosion.and which modify, to a great
degree, both the evidences of stratification and this external form.
These are aqueous erosion and disintegration. The latter only is to be
taken into consideration when we have to do with minor features of crag;
but the former is a force in constant action—of the very utmost
importance—a force to which one-half of the great outlines of all
mountains is entirely owing, and which has much influence upon every one
of their details.
Now the tendency of aqueous action over a large elevated surface is
always to make that surface symmetrically and evenly convex and
dome-like, sloping gradually more and more as it descends, until it
reaches an inclination of about 40°, at which slope it will descend
perfectly straight to the valley; for at that slope the soil washed from
above will accumulate upon the hill-side, as it cannot lie in steeper
beds. This influence, then, is exercised more or less on all mountains,
with greater or less effect in proportion as the rock is harder or
softer, more or less liable to decomposition, more or less recent in
date of elevation, and more or less characteristic in its original
forms; but it universally induces, in the lower parts of mountains, a
series of the most exquisitely symmetrical convex curves, terminating,
as they descend to the valley, in uniform and uninterrupted slopes; this
symmetrical structure being perpetually interrupted by cliffs and
projecting masses, which give evidence of the interior parallelism of
the mountain anatomy, but which interrupt the convex forms more
frequently by rising out of them, than by indentation.
There remains but one fact more to be noticed. All mountains, in some
degree, but especially those which are composed of soft or decomposing
substance, are delicately and symmetrically § 12. And the effect of the
action of torrents.furrowed by the descent of streams. The traces of
their action commence at the very summits, fine threads, and
multitudinous, like the uppermost branches of a delicate tree. They
unite in groups as they descend, concentrating gradually into dark
undulating ravines, into which the body of the mountain descends on each
side, at first in a convex curve, but at the bottom with the same
uniform slope on each side which it assumes in its final descent to the
plain, unless the rock be very hard, when the stream will cut itself a vertical chasm at the bottom of the curves, and there will
be no even slope.[57] If, on the other hand, the rock be very soft, the
slopes will increase rapidly in height and depth from day to day; washed
away at the bottom and crumbling at the top, until, by their reaching
the summit of the masses of rock which separate the active torrents, the
whole mountain is divided into a series of penthouse-like ridges, all
guiding to its summit, and becoming steeper and narrower as they ascend;
these in their turn being divided by similar, but smaller
ravines—caused in the same manner—into the same kind of ridges; and
these again by another series, the arrangement being carried finer and
farther according to the softness of the rock. The south side of
Saddleback, in Cumberland, is a characteristic example; and the Montagne
du Tacondy, in Chamonix, a noble instance of one of these ridges or
buttresses, with all its subdivisions, on a colossal scale.
Now we wish to draw especial attention to the broad and bold simplicity
of mass, and the excessive complication of details, which influences
like these, acting on an enormous scale, § 13. The exceeding simplicity
of contour caused by these influences.must inevitably produce in all
mountain groups; because each individual part and promontory, being
compelled to assume the same symmetrical curves as its neighbors, and to
descend at precisely the same slope to the valley, falls in with their
prevailing lines, and becomes a part of a great and harmonious whole,
instead of an unconnected and discordant individual. It is true that
each of these members has its own touches of specific character, its own
projecting crags and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of
its lines will be such as unite with, though they do not repeat, those
of its neighbors, and carry out the evidence of one great influence and
spirit to the limits of the scene. This effort is farther aided by the
original unity and connection of the rocks themselves, which though it
often may be violently interrupted, is never without evidence of
existence; for the very interruption itself forces the eye to feel that
there is something to be interrupted, a sympathy and
similarity of lines and fractures, which, however full of variety and
change of direction, § 14. And multiplicity of feature.never lose the
appearance of symmetry of one kind or another. But, on the other hand,
it is to be remembered that these great sympathizing masses are not one
mountain, but a thousand mountains; that they are originally composed of
a multitude of separate eminences, hewn and chiselled indeed into
associating form, but each retaining still its marked points and
features of character,—that each of these individual members has, by
the very process which assimilated it to the rest, been divided and
subdivided into equally multitudinous groups of minor mountains;
finally, that the whole complicated system is interrupted forever and
ever by daring manifestations of the inward mountain will—by the
precipice which has submitted to no modulation of the torrent, and the
peak which has bowed itself to no terror of the storm. Hence we see that
the same imperative laws which require perfect simplicity of mass,
require infinite and termless complication of detail,—that there will
not be an inch nor a hairbreadth of the gigantic heap which has not its
touch of separate character, its own peculiar curve, stealing out for an
instant and then melting into the common line; felt for a moment by the
blue mist of the hollow beyond, then lost when it crosses the
enlightened slope,—that all this multiplicity will be grouped into
larger divisions, each felt by their increasing aerial perspective, and
their instants of individual form, these into larger, and these into
larger still, until all are merged in the great impression and
prevailing energy of the two or three vast dynasties which divide the
kingdom of the scene.
There is no vestige nor shadow of approach to such treatment as this in
the whole compass of ancient art. Whoever the master, his hills,
wherever he has attempted them, have not the § 15. Both utterly
neglected in ancient art.slightest trace of association or connection;
they are separate, conflicting, confused, petty and paltry heaps of
earth; there is no marking of distances or divisions in their body; they
may have holes in them, but no valleys,—protuberances and excrescences,
but no parts; and in consequence are invariably diminutive and
contemptible in their whole appearance and impression.
But look at the mass of mountain on the right in Turner's Daphne hunting
with Leucippus. It is simple, broad, and united as one surge of a
swelling sea; it rises in an unbroken § 16. The fidelity of treatment in
Turner's Daphne and Leucippas.line along the valley, and lifts its
promontories with an equal slope. But it contains in its body ten
thousand hills. There is not a quarter of an inch of its surface without
its suggestion of increasing distance and individual form. First, on the
right, you have a range of tower-like precipices, the clinging wood
climbing along their ledges and cresting their summits, white waterfalls
gleaming through its leaves; not, as in Claude's scientific ideals,
poured in vast torrents over the top, and carefully keeping all the way
down on the most projecting parts of the sides; but stealing down,
traced from point to point, through shadow after shadow, by their
evanescent foam and flashing light,—here a wreath, and there a
ray,—through the deep chasms and hollow ravines, out of which rise the
soft rounded slopes of mightier mountain, surge beyond surge, immense
and numberless, of delicate and gradual curve, accumulating in the sky
until their garment of forest is exchanged for the shadowy fold of
slumbrous morning cloud, above which the utmost silver peak shines
islanded and alone. Put what mountain painting you will beside this, of
any other artist, and its heights will look like mole-hills in
comparison, because it will not have the unity nor the multiplicity
which are in nature, and with Turner, the signs of size.
Again, in the Avalanche and Inundation, we have for the whole subject
nothing but one vast bank of united mountain, and one stretch of
uninterrupted valley. Though the bank is § 17. And in the Avalanche and
Inundation.broken into promontory beyond promontory, peak above peak,
each the abode of a new tempest, the arbiter of a separate desolation,
divided from each other by the rushing of the snow, by the motion of the
storm, by the thunder of the torrent; the mighty unison of their dark
and lofty line, the brotherhood of ages, is preserved unbroken; and the
broad valley at their feet, though measured league after league away by
a thousand passages of sun and darkness, and marked with fate beyond
fate of hamlet and of inhabitant, lies yet but as a straight and narrow
channel, a filling furrow before the flood. Whose work will you compare
with this? Salvator's gray heaps of earth, seven yards high,
covered with bunchy brambles, that we may be under no mistake about the
size, thrown about at random in a little plain, beside a zigzagging
river, just wide enough to admit of the possibility of there being fish
in it, and with banks just broad enough to allow the respectable angler
or hermit to sit upon them conveniently in the foreground? Is there more
of nature in such paltriness, think you, than in the valley and the
mountain which bend to each other like the trough of the sea; with the
flank of the one swept in one surge into the height of heaven, until the
pine forests lie on its immensity like the shadows of narrow clouds, and
the hollow of the other laid league by league into the blue of the air,
until its white villages flash in the distance only like the fall of a
sunbeam?
But let us examine by what management of the details themselves this
wholeness and vastness of effect are given. We have just seen (§ 11)
that it is impossible for the slope of a mountain, § 18. The rarity
among secondary hills of steep slopes or high precipices.not actually a
precipice of rock, to exceed 35° or among secondary 40°, and that by far
the greater part of all hill-surface is composed of graceful curves of
much less degree than this, reaching 40° only as their ultimate and
utmost inclination. It must be farther observed that the interruptions
to such curves, by precipices or steps, are always small in proportion
to the slopes themselves. Precipices rising vertically more than 100
feet are very rare among the secondary hills of which we are speaking. I
am not aware of any cliff in England or Wales where a plumb-line can
swing clear for 200 feet; and even although sometimes, with intervals,
breaks, and steps, we get perhaps 800 feet of a slope of 60° or 70°, yet
not only are these cases very rare, but even these have little influence
on the great contours of a mountain 4000 or 5000 feet in elevation,
being commonly balanced by intervals of ascent not exceeding 6° or 8°.
The result of which is, first, that the peaks and precipices of a
mountain appear as little more than jags or steps emerging from its
great curves; and, secondly, that the bases of all hills are enormously
extensive as compared with their elevation, so that there must be always
a horizontal distance between the observer and the summit five or six
times exceeding the perpendicular one.
Now it is evident, that whatever the actual angle of elevation of the
mountain may be, every exhibition of this horizontal distance between us
and the summit is an addition to its height, § 19. And consequent
expression of horizontal distance in their ascent.and of course to its
impressiveness; while every endeavor to exhibit its slope as steep and
sudden, is diminution at once of its distance and elevation. In
consequence nature is constantly endeavoring to impress upon us this
horizontal distance, which, even in spite of all her means of
manifesting it, we are apt to forget or underestimate; and all her
noblest effects depend on the full measurement and feeling of it. And it
is to the abundant and marvellous expression of it by Turner, that I
would direct especial attention, as being that which is in itself
demonstrative of the highest knowledge and power—knowledge, in the
constant use of lines of subdued slope in preference to steep or violent
ascents, and in the perfect subjection of all such features, when they
necessarily occur, to the larger masses; and power, in the inimitable
statements of retiring space by mere painting of surface details,
without the aid of crossing shadows, divided forms, or any other
artifice.
The Caudebec, in the Rivers of France, is a fine instance of almost
every fact which we have been pointing out. We have in it, first, the
clear expression of what takes place constantly § 20. Full statement of
all these facts in various works of Turner, Caudebec, etc.among
hills,—that the river, as it passes through the valley, will fall
backwards and forwards from side to side, lying first, if I may so
speak, with all its weight against the hills on the one side, and then
against those on the other; so that, as here it is exquisitely told, in
each of its circular sweeps the whole force of its current is brought
deep and close to the bases of the hills, while the water on the side
next the plain is shallow, deepening gradually. In consequence of this,
the hills are cut away at their bases by the current, so that their
slopes are interrupted by precipices mouldering to the water. Observe
first, how nobly Turner has given us the perfect unity of the whole mass
of hill, making us understand that every ravine in it has been cut
gradually by streams. The first eminence, beyond the city, is not
disjointed from, or independent of, the one succeeding, but evidently
part of the same whole, originally united, separated only by the action of the stream between. The association of the second and
third is still more clearly told, for we see that there has been a
little longitudinal valley running along the brow of their former united
mass, which, after the ravine had been cut between, formed the two jags
which Turner has given us at the same point in each of their curves.
This great triple group has, however, been originally distinct from
those beyond it; for we see that these latter are only the termination
of the enormous even slope, which appears again on the extreme right,
having been interrupted by the rise of the near hills. Observe how the
descent of the whole series is kept gentle and subdued, never suffered
to become steep except where it has been cut away by the river, the
sudden precipice caused by which is exquisitely marked in the last two
promontories, where they are defined against the bright horizon; and,
finally, observe how, in the ascent of the nearest eminence beyond the
city, without one cast shadow or any division of distances, every yard
of surface is felt to be retiring by the mere painting of its
details,—how we are permitted to walk up it, and along its top, and are
carried, before we are half way up, a league or two forward into the
picture. The difficulty of doing this, however, can scarcely be
appreciated except by an artist.
I do not mean to assert that this great painter is acquainted with the
geological laws and facts he has thus illustrated; I am not aware
whether he be or not; I merely wish to demonstrate, § 21. The use of
considering geological truths.in points admitting of demonstration, that
intense observation of, and strict adherence to truth, which it is
impossible to demonstrate in its less tangible and more delicate
manifestations. However I may feel the truth of every touch and line,
I cannot prove truth, except in large and general features; and I
leave it to the arbitration of every man's reason, whether it be not
likely that the painter who is thus so rigidly faithful in great things
that every one of his pictures might be the illustration of a lecture on
the physical sciences, is not likely to be faithful also in small.
Honfleur, and the scene between Clairmont and Mauves, supply us with
farther instances of the same grand simplicity of treatment; and the
latter is especially remarkable for its expression of the furrowing of
the hills by descending water, in the complete roundness and
symmetry of their curves, and in the § 22. Expression of retiring
surface by Turner contrasted with the work of Claude.delicate and sharp
shadows which are cast in the undulating ravines. It is interesting to
compare with either of these noble works such hills as those of Claude,
on the left of the picture marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery. There is
no detail nor surface in one of them; not an inch of ground for us to
stand upon; we must either sit astride upon the edge, or fall to the
bottom. I could not point to a more complete instance of mountain
calumniation; nor can I oppose it more completely, in every
circumstance, than with the Honfleur of Turner, already mentioned; in
which there is not one edge nor division admitted, and yet we are
permitted to climb up the hill from the town, and pass far into the mist
along its top, and so descend mile after mile along the ridge to
seaward, until, without one break in the magnificent unity of progress,
we are carried down to the utmost horizon. And contrast the brown paint
of Claude, which you can only guess to be meant for rock or soil because
it is brown, with Turner's profuse, pauseless richness of feature,
carried through all the enormous space—the unmeasured wealth of
exquisite detail, over which the mind can dwell, and walk, and wander,
and feast forever, without finding either one break in its vast
simplicity, or one vacuity in its exhaustless splendor.
But these, and hundreds of others which it is sin not to dwell
upon—wooded hills and undulating moors of North England—rolling surges
of park and forest of the South—soft and § 23. The same moderation of
slope in the contours of his higher hills.vine-clad ranges of French
coteaux, casting their oblique shadows on silver leagues of glancing
rivers,—and olive-whitened promontories of Alp and Apennine, are only
instances of Turner's management of the lower and softer hills. In the
bolder examples of his powers, where he is dealing with lifted masses of
enormous mountain, we shall still find him as cautious in his use of
violent slopes or vertical lines, and still as studied in his expression
of retiring surface. We never get to the top of one of his hills without
being tired with our walk; not by the steepness, observe, but by the
stretch; for we are carried up towards the heaven by such delicate
gradation of line, that we scarcely feel that we have left the earth
before we find ourselves among the clouds. The Skiddaw, in
the illustrations to Scott, is a noble instance of this majestic
moderation. The mountain lies in the morning light, like a level vapor;
its gentle lines of ascent are scarcely felt by the eye; it rises
without effort or exertion, by the mightiness of its mass; every slope
is full of slumber; and we know not how it has been exalted, until we
find it laid as a floor for the walking of the eastern clouds. So again
in the Fort Augustus, where the whole elevation of the hills depends on
the soft lines of swelling surface which undulate back through leagues
of mist carrying us unawares higher and higher above the diminished
lake, until, when we are all but exhausted with the endless distance,
the mountains make their last spring, and bear us, in that instant of
exertion, half way to heaven.
I ought perhaps rather to have selected, as instances of mountain form,
such elaborate works as the Oberwesel or Lake of Uri, but I have before
expressed my dislike of speaking of such magnificent § 24. The peculiar
difficulty of investigating the more essential truths of hill
outline.pictures as these by parts. And indeed all proper consideration
of the hill drawing of Turner must be deferred until we are capable of
testing it by the principles of beauty; for, after all, the most
essential qualities of line,—those on which all right delineation of
mountain character must depend, are those which are only to be explained
or illustrated by appeals to our feeling of what is beautiful. There is
an expression and a feeling about all the hill lines of nature, which I
think I shall be able, hereafter, to explain; but it is not to be
reduced to line and rule—not to be measured by angles or described by
compasses—not to be chipped out by the geologist, or equated by the
mathematician. It is intangible, incalculable—a thing to be felt, not
understood—to be loved, not comprehended—a music of the eyes, a melody
of the heart, whose truth is known only by its sweetness.
I can scarcely, without repeating myself to tediousness, enter at
present into proper consideration of the mountain drawing of other
modern painters. We have, fortunately, several by whom § 25. Works of
other modern artists. Clarkson Stanfield.the noble truths which we have
seen so fully exemplified by Turner are also deeply felt and faithfully
rendered; though there is a necessity, for the perfect statement of
them, of such an unison of freedom of thought with perfect mastery over
the greatest mechanical difficulties, as we can scarcely
hope to see attained by more than one man in our age. Very nearly the
same words which we used in reference to Stanfield's drawings of the
central clouds, might be applied to his rendering of mountain truth. He
occupies exactly the same position with respect to other artists in
earth as in cloud. None can be said really to draw the mountain as he
will, to have so perfect a mastery over its organic development; but
there is, nevertheless, in all his works, some want of feeling and
individuality. He has studied and mastered his subject to the bottom,
but he trusts too much to that past study, and rather invents his hills
from his possessed stores of knowledge, than expresses in them the fresh
ideas received from nature. Hence, in all that he does, we feel a little
too much that the hills are his own. We cannot swear to their being the
particular crags and individual promontories which break the cone of
Ischia, or shadow the waves of Maggiore. We are nearly sure, on the
contrary, that nothing but the outline is local, and that all the
filling up has been done in the study. Now, we have § 26. Importance of
particular and individual truth in hill drawing.already shown (Sect. I.
Chap. III.) that particular truths are more important than general ones,
and this is just one of the cases in which that rule especially applies.
Nothing is so great a sign of truth and beauty in mountain drawing as
the appearance of individuality—nothing is so great a proof of real
imagination and invention, as the appearance that nothing has been
imagined or invented. We ought to feel of every inch of mountain, that
it must have existence in reality, that if we had lived near the place
we should have known every crag of it, and that there must be people to
whom every crevice and shadow of the picture is fraught with
recollections, and colored with associations. The moment the artist can
make us feel this—the moment he can make us think that he has done
nothing, that nature has done all—that moment he becomes ennobled, he
proves himself great. As long as we remember him, we cannot respect him.
We honor him most when we most forget him. He becomes great when he
becomes invisible. And we may, perhaps, be permitted to express our hope
that Mr. Stanfield will—our conviction that he must—if he would
advance in his rank as an artist, attend more to local character, and
give us generally less of the Stanfield limestone. He ought
to study with greater attention the rocks which afford finer divisions
and more delicate parts (slates and gneiss;) and he ought to observe
more fondly and faithfully those beautiful laws and lines of swell and
curvature, by intervals of which nature sets off and relieves the energy
of her peaked outlines. He is at present apt to be too rugged, and, in
consequence, to lose size. Of his best manner of drawing hills, I
believe I can scarcely give a better example than the rocks of Suli,
engraved in Finden's illustrations to Byron. It is very grand and
perfect in all parts and points.
Copley Fielding is peculiarly graceful and affectionate in his drawing
of the inferior mountains. But as with his clouds so with his hills; as
long as he keeps to silvery films of misty outline, § 27. Works of
Copley Fielding. His hill feeling.or purple shadows mingled with the
evening light, he is true and beautiful; but the moment he withdraws the
mass out of its veiling mystery, he is lost. His worst drawings,
therefore, are those on which he has spent most time; for he is sure to
show weakness wherever he gives detail. We believe that all his errors
proceed, as we observed before, from his not working with the chalk or
pencil; and that if he would paint half the number of pictures in the
year which he usually produces, and spend his spare time in hard dry
study of forms, the half he painted would be soon worth double the
present value of all. For he really has deep and genuine feeling of hill
character—a far higher perception of space, elevation, incorporeal
color, and all those qualities which are the poetry of mountains, than
any other of our water-color painters; and it is an infinite pity that
he should not give to these delicate feelings the power of realization,
which might be attained by a little labor. A few thorough studies of his
favorite mountains, Ben-Venue or Ben-Cruachan, in clear, strong, front
chiaroscuro, allowing himself neither color nor mist, nor any means of
getting over the ground but downright drawing, would, we think, open his
eyes to sources of beauty of which he now takes no cognizance. He ought
not, however, to repeat the same subjects so frequently, as the casting
about of the mind for means of varying them blunts the feelings to
truth. And he should remember that an artist, who is not making
progress, is nearly certain to be retrograding; and that progress is not
to be made by working in the study, or by mere labor
bestowed on the repetition of unchanging conceptions.
J. D. Harding would paint mountains very nobly, if he made them of more
importance in his compositions, but they are usually little more than
backgrounds for his foliage or buildings; § 28. Works of J. D. Harding
and others.and it is his present system to make his backgrounds very
slight. His color is very beautiful: indeed, both his and Fielding's are
far more refined than Stanfield's. We wish he would oftener take up some
wild subject dependent for interest on its mountain forms alone, as we
should anticipate the highest results from his perfect drawing; and we
think that such an exercise, occasionally gone completely through, would
counteract a tendency which we perceive in his present distances, to
become a little thin and cutting, if not incomplete.
The late G. Robson was a man most thoroughly acquainted with all the
characteristics of our own island hills; and some of the outlines of
John Varley showed very grand feeling of energy of form.
I have above exhausted all terms of vituperation, and probably
disgusted the reader; and yet I have not spoken with enough severity: I
know not any terms of blame that are bitter enough to chastise justly
the mountain drawings of Salvator in the pictures of the Pitti Palace.
Some terrific cuts and chasms of this kind occur on the north side
of the Valais, from Sion to Briey. The torrent from the great Aletsch
glacier descends through one of them. Elsewhere chasms may be found as
narrow, but few so narrow and deep.
OF THE FOREGROUND.
We have now only to observe the close characteristics of the rocks and
soils to which the large masses of which we have been speaking, owe
their ultimate characters.
§ 1. What rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape
foreground.
We have already seen that there exists a marked distinction
between those stratified rocks whose beds are amorphous and without
subdivision, as many limestones and sandstones, and those which are
divided by lines of lamination, as all slates. The last kind of rock is
the more frequent in nature, and forms the greater part of all hill
scenery; it has, however, been successfully grappled with by few, even
of the moderns, except Turner; while there is no single example of any
aim at it or thought of it among the ancients, whose foregrounds, as far
as it is possible to guess at their intention through their concentrated
errors, are chosen from among the tufa and travertin of the lower
Apennines, (the ugliest as well as the least characteristic rocks of
nature,) and whose larger features of rock scenery, if we look at them
with a predetermination to find in them a resemblance of something,
may be pronounced at least liker the mountain limestone than anything
else. I shall glance, therefore, at the general characters of these
materials first, in order that we may be able to appreciate the fidelity
of rock-drawing on which Salvator's reputation has been built.
The massive limestones separate generally into irregular blocks, tending
to the form of cubes or parallelopipeds, and terminated by tolerably
smooth planes. The weather, acting on § 2. Salvator's limestones. The
real characters of the rock. Its fractures and obtuseness of angles.the
edges of these blocks, rounds them off; but the frost, which, while it
cannot penetrate nor split the body of the stone, acts energetically on
the angles, splits off the rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresh,
and complicated edges. Hence the angles of such blocks are
usually marked by a series of steps and fractures, in which the peculiar
character of the rock is most distinctly seen; the effect being
increased in many limestones by the interposition of two or three
thinner beds between the large strata of which the block has been a
part; these thin laminæ breaking easily, and supplying a number of
fissures and lines at the edge of the detached mass. Thus, as a general
principle, if a rock have character anywhere, it will be on the angle,
and however even and smooth its great planes may be, it will usually
break into variety where it turns a corner. In one of the most exquisite
pieces of rock truth ever put on canvas, the foreground of the Napoleon
in the Academy, 1842, this principle was beautifully exemplified in the
complicated fractures of the upper angle just where it turned from the
light, while the planes of the rock were varied only by the modulation
they owed to the waves. It follows from this structure that the edges of
all rock being partially truncated, first by large fractures, and then
by the rounding of the fine edges of these by the weather, perpetually
present convex transitions from the light to the dark side, the planes
of the rock almost always swelling a little from the angle.
Now it will be found throughout the works of Salvator, that his most
usual practice was to give a concave sweep of the brush for his first
expression of the dark side, leaving the paint darkest § 3. Salvator's
acute angles caused by the meeting of concave curves.towards the light;
by which daring and original method of procedure he has succeeded in
covering his foregrounds with forms which approximate to those of
drapery, of ribbons, of crushed cocked hats, of locks of hair, of waves,
leaves, or anything, in short, flexible or tough, but which of course
are not only unlike, but directly contrary to the forms which nature has
impressed on rocks.[58]
And the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are dashed at
random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all resemblance
whatever to rock structure from their frequent § 4. Peculiar
distinctness of light and shade in the rocks of nature.want of any
meaning at all, and from the impossibility of our supposing any of them
to be representative of shade. Now, if there be any part of landscape in
which nature develops her principles of light and shade more clearly
than another, it is rock; for the dark sides of fractured stone receive
brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are
marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to
the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions
nearly parallel. Hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and
reflected light separated with the most delicious distinctness, and the
organization and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of
language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, requires
the most transparent color, and the most delicate § 5. Peculiar
confusion of both in the rocks of Salvator.and scientific drawing. So
far are the works of the old landscape-painters from rendering this,
that it is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in which the shadow
can even be distinguished from the dark side—they scarcely seem to know
the one to be darker than the other; and the strokes of the brush are
not used to explain or express a form known or conceived, but are dashed
and daubed about without any aim beyond the covering of the canvas. "A
rock," the old masters appear to say to themselves, "is a great
irregular, formless, characterless lump; but it must have shade upon it,
and any gray marks will do for that shade."
§ 6. And total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness.
Finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untraversed by
delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the only
means by which the peculiar quality in which rocks most differ from
the other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be
effectually suggested, we look in vain among the blots and stains with
which the rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appearance
of fissure or splintering. Toughness and malleability appear to be the
qualities whose expression is most aimed at; § 7. Instances in
particular pictures.sometimes sponginess, softness, flexibility,
tenuity, and occasionally transparency. Take, for instance, the
foreground of Salvator, in No. 220 of the Dulwich Gallery. There is, on
the right-hand side of it, an object, which I never walk through the
room without contemplating for a minute or two with renewed solicitude
and anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and imaginative
conjectures as to its probable or possible meaning. I think there is
reason to suppose that the artist intended it either for a very large
stone, or for the trunk of a tree; but any decision as to its being
either one or the other of these must, I conceive, be the extreme of
rashness. It melts into the ground on one side, and might reasonably be
conjectured to form a part of it, having no trace of woody structure or
color; but on the other side it presents a series of concave curves,
interrupted by cogs like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest
theorist would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing
symbolical of rock. The forms which this substance, whatever it be,
assumes, will be found repeated, though in a less degree, in the
foreground of No. 159, where they are evidently meant for rock.
Let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the faithful,
scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which we find in the works
of Clarkson Stanfield. He is a man especially to be opposed § 8.
Compared with the works of Stanfield.to the old masters, because he
usually confines himself to the same rock subjects as they—the
mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary formation which arrange
themselves more or less into broad and simple masses; and in the
rendering of these it is impossible to go beyond him. Nothing can
surpass his care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct
and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained, never
confusing it with local color, however richly his surface-texture may be
given; while the wonderful play of line with which he will vary, and
through which he will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is almost as instructive as that of nature herself. I cannot point
to any of his works as better or more characteristic than others; but
his Ischia, in the present British Institution, may be taken as a fair
average example. The Botallack Mine, Cornwall, engraved in the Coast
Scenery, gives us a very finished and generic representation of rock,
whose primal organization has been violently affected by external
influences. We have the stratification and cleavage indicated at its
base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and decisive, disguised
gradually as it rises by the rounding of the surface and the successive
furrows caused by the descent of streams. But the exquisite drawing of
the foreground is especially worthy of notice. No huge concave sweeps of
the brush, no daubing or splashing here. Every inch of it is brittle and
splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most
perfect, speaking light and shade,—we can stumble over the edges of
them. The East Cliff, Hastings, is § 9. Their absolute opposition in
every particular.another very fine example, from the exquisite
irregularity with which its squareness of general structure is varied
and disguised. Observe how totally contrary every one of its lines is to
the absurdities of Salvator. Stanfield's are all angular and straight,
every apparent curve made up of right lines, while Salvator's are all
sweeping and flourishing like so much penmanship. Stanfield's lines pass
away into delicate splintery fissures. Salvator's are broad daubs
throughout. Not one of Stanfield's lines is like another. Every one of
Salvator's mocks all the rest. All Stanfield's curves, where his
universal angular character is massed, as on the left-hand side, into
large sweeping forms, are convex. Salvator's are every one concave.
The foregrounds of J. D. Harding and rocks of his middle distances are
also thoroughly admirable. He is not quite so various and undulating in
his line as Stanfield, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is
wanting in solidity, § 10. The rocks of J. D. Harding.owing to a little
confusion of the dark side and shadow with each other, or with the local
color. But his work, in near passages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged rock,
is absolute perfection, excelling Stanfield in the perfect freedom and
facility with which his fragments are splintered and scattered; true in
every line without the least apparent effort. Stanfield's best works are laborious, but Harding's rocks fall from under his hand
as if they had just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant
into lovely form. In color also he incomparably surpasses Stanfield, who
is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his gray. The rich, lichenous,
and changeful warmth, and delicate weathered grays of Harding's rock,
illustrated as they are by the most fearless, firm, and unerring
drawing, render his wild pieces of torrent shore the finest things, next
to the work of Turner, in English foreground art.
J. B. Pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and expresses
it clearly and forcibly; but it is much to be regretted that this clever
artist appears to be losing all sense of color and is getting more and
more mannered in execution, evidently never studying from nature except
with the previous determination to Pynize everything.[59]
Before passing to Turner, let us take one more glance at the foregrounds
of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock,
which is comparatively a rare component part § 11. Characters of loose
earth and soil.of their foregrounds, but to the common soil which they
were obliged to paint constantly, and whose forms and appearances are
the same all over the world. A steep bank of loose earth of any kind,
that has been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it
may not be three feet high, features capable of giving high
gratification to a careful observer. It is almost a fac-simile of a
mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock; it possesses nearly as much
variety of character, and is governed by laws of organization no less
rigid. It is furrowed in the first place by undulating lines, by the
descent of the rain, little ravines, which are cut precisely at the same
slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges scarcely less graceful
in their contour, and beautifully sharp in their chiselling. Where a
harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, § 12. Its exceeding grace and
fulness of feature.the earth is washed from beneath it, and accumulates
above it, and there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping
curve at its summit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark
shadow; where the soil has been soft, it will probably be washed away
underneath until it gives way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular
line of fracture; and all these circumstances are explained to the eye
in sunshine with the most delicious clearness; every touch of shadow
being expressive of some particular truth of structure, and bearing
witness to the symmetry into which the whole mass has been reduced.
Where this operation has gone on long, and vegetation has assisted in
softening the outlines, we have our ground brought into graceful and
irregular curves, of infinite variety, but yet always so connected with
each other, and guiding to each other, that the eye never feels them as
separate things, nor feels inclined to count them, nor perceives a
likeness in one to the other; they are not repetitions of each other,
but are different parts of one system. Each would be imperfect without
the one next to it.
Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars
wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite
examples, what it is which makes one representation § 13. The ground of
Teniers.right, and another wrong. The ground of Teniers for instance, in
No. 139 in the Dulwich Gallery, is an example of all that is wrong. It
is a representation of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as
we should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the ruins of
fallen buildings. It has not one contour nor character of the soil of
nature, and yet I can scarcely tell you why, except that the curves
repeat one another, and are monotonous in their flow, and
are unbroken by the delicate angle and momentary pause with which the
feeling of nature would have touched them, and are disunited; so that
the eye leaps from this to that, and does not pass from one to the other
without being able to stop, drawn on by the continuity of line; neither
is there any undulation or furrowing of watermark, nor in one spot or
atom of the whole surface, is there distinct explanation of form to the
eye by means of a determined shadow. All is mere sweeping of the brush
over the surface with various ground colors, without a single indication
of character by means of real shade.
Let not these points be deemed unimportant; the truths of form in common
ground are quite as valuable, (let me anticipate myself for a moment,)
quite as beautiful, as any others which § 14. Importance of these minor
parts and points.nature presents, and in lowland landscape they present
us with a species of line which it is quite impossible to obtain in any
other way,—the alternately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery,
which, however small its scale, is always of inestimable value,
contrasted with the repetitions of organic form which we are compelled
to give in vegetation. A really great artist dwells on every inch of
exposed soil with care and delight, and renders it one of the most
essential, speaking and pleasurable parts of his composition. And be it
remembered, that the man who, in the most conspicuous part of his
foreground, will violate truth with every stroke of the pencil, is not
likely to be more careful in other parts of it; and that in the little
bits which I fix upon for animadversion, I am not pointing out solitary
faults, but only the most characteristic examples of the falsehood which
is everywhere, and which renders the whole foreground one mass of § 15.
The observance of them is the real distinction between the master and
the novice.contradictions and absurdities. Nor do I myself see wherein
the great difference lies between a master and a novice, except in the
rendering of the finer truths, of which I am at present speaking. To
handle the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with accuracy
enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or two's
practice will give any man; but to trace among the grass and weeds those
mysteries of invention and combination, by which nature appeals to the
intellect—to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and
undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and
fine finger, like the touch of the rain itself—to find even in all that
appears most trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant
working of the Divine power "for glory and for beauty," and to teach it
and proclaim it to the unthinking and the unregardless—this, as it is
the peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the
peculiar duty which is demanded of it by the Deity.
It would take me no reasonable nor endurable time, if I were to point
out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood which the
inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded § 16. The ground of
Cuyp.in originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. It is not this man,
nor that man, nor one school nor another; all agree in entire
repudiation of everything resembling facts, and in the high degree of
absurdity of what they substitute for them. Even Cuyp, who evidently saw
and studied near nature, as an artist should do—not fishing for
idealities, but taking what nature gave him, and thanking her for
it—even he appears to have supposed that the drawing of the earth might
be trusted to chance or imagination, and, in consequence, strews § 17.
And of Claude.his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones. Perhaps,
however, the "beautiful foregrounds" of Claude afford the most
remarkable instances of childishness and incompetence of all. That of
his morning landscape, with the large group of trees and high
single-arched bridge, in the National Gallery, is a pretty fair example
of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. I will not say
anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one
behind another from the water. I merely affirm that it amounts to a
demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without
any reference to nature whatever. In fact, there is quite enough
intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what
appears to be meant for vegetation upon them, amounts to nothing more
than a green stain on their surfaces, the more evidently false because
the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly
visible and distinct; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts
against that beyond it, are not only such as crumbling earth could never
show or assume, but are maintained through their whole progress
ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected by any of the circumstances of
varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is
inevitably subjected. § 18. The entire weakness and childishness of the
latter.In fact, the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a tyro
to express, by successive edges, that approach of earth which he finds
himself incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface. Claude
wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came nearer and
nearer: he had probably often tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or
a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonized anatomy of nature; and
he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the laws of
perspective, such efforts on his part invariably ended in his reducing
his pond to the form of a round O, and making it look perpendicular.
Much comfort and solace of mind, in such unpleasant circumstances, may
be derived from instantly dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of
successive promontories, and developing their edges with completeness
and intensity. Every school-girl's drawing, as soon as her mind has
arrived at so great a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that
perpendicular water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying
instances of this unfailing resource; and this foreground of Claude's is
only one out of the § 19. Compared with the work of Turner.thousand
cases in which he has been reduced to it. And if it be asked, how the
proceeding differs from that of nature, I have only to point to nature
herself, as she is drawn in the foreground of Turner's Mercury and
Argus, a case precisely similar to Claude's, of earthy crumbling banks
cut away by water. It will be found in this picture (and I am now
describing nature's work and Turner's with the same words) that the
whole distance is given by retirement of solid surface; and that if ever
an edge is expressed, it is only felt for an instant, and then lost
again; so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for a long jump to
another like it, but is guided over it, and round it, into the hollow
beyond; and thus the whole receding mass of ground, going back for more
than a quarter of a mile, is made completely one—no part of it is
separated from the rest for an instant—it is all united, and its
modulations are members, not divisions of its mass. But those
modulations are countless—heaving here, sinking there—now swelling,
now mouldering, now blending, now breaking—giving, in fact, to the
foreground of this universal master, precisely the same
qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as Claude gave to his
foreground precisely the same qualities which we had before found in
his hills,—infinite unity in the one case, finite division in the
other.
Let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the principles of
the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them throughout with
those of our great modern master. The § 20. General features of Turner's
foreground.investigation of the excellence of Turner's drawing becomes
shorter and easier as we proceed, because the great distinctions between
his work and that of other painters are the same, whatever the object or
subject may be; and after once showing the general characters of the
particular specific forms under consideration, we have only to point, in
the works of Turner, to the same principles of infinity and variety in
carrying them out, which we have before insisted upon with reference to
other subjects.
The Upper Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire, engraved in the England series,
may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be opposed to the
work of Salvator. We have, in the § 21. Geological structure of his
rocks in the Fall of the Tees.great face of rock which divides the two
streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction of the
strata, and these same lines are given in ascending perspective all
along the precipice on the right. But we see also on the central
precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which inform us of one series of
joints dividing these horizontal strata; and the exceeding smoothness
and evenness of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused
by a great separation of substance in the direction of another more
important line of joints, running in a direction across the river.
Accordingly, we see on the left that the whole summit of the precipice
is divided again and again by this great series of joints into vertical
beds, which lie against each other with their sides towards us, and are
traversed downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face of
the central cliff. Now, let me direct especial attention to the way in
which Turner has marked over this general § 22. Their convex surfaces
and fractured edges.and grand unity of structure, the modifying effects
of the weather and the torrent. Observe how the whole surface of the
hill above the precipice on the left[60] is brought into one
smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until it comes to the
edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle, (compare § 2,)
breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks its geological
structure. Observe how every one of the separate blocks, into which it
divides, is rounded and convex in its salient edges turned to the
weather, and how every one of their inward angles is marked clear and
sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex. Observe how
exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the convex surfaces,
indicating that every one of them has been modelled by the winding and
undulating of running water; and how gradually they become steeper as
they descend, until they are torn § 23. And perfect unity.down into the
face of the precipice. Finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the
touches which express fissure or shade; every one in varying directions
and with new forms, and yet throughout indicating that perfect
parallelism which at once explained to us the geology of the rock, and
falling into one grand mass, treated with the same simplicity of light
and shade which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the features
of the human face; which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro,
never disturb the wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one
ball or mass. So here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the
greatest proximity of the rounded mass; and from this every shade
becomes fainter and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and
dimness of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. Again, see how
the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff
above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by
the confusion of débris accumulated in its channel. In fact, the great
quality about Turner's drawings which more especially proves their
transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on
past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us;
for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another, not that a
pretty or interesting morsel has been selected here and there, but that
the whole truth has been given, with all the relations of its parts; so
that we can pick and choose our points of pleasure or of
thought for ourselves, and reason upon the whole with the same certainty
which we should after having climbed and § 24. Various parts whose
history is told us by the details of the drawing.hammered over the rocks
bit by bit. With this drawing before him, a geologist could give a
lecture upon the whole system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as
safely upon the past and future states of this very spot, as if he were
standing and getting wet with the spray. He would tell you, at once,
that the waterfall was in a state of rapid recession; that it had once
formed a wide cataract just at the spot where the figure is sitting on
the heap of débris; and that when it was there, part of it came down by
the channel on the left, its bed being still marked by the delicately
chiselled lines of fissure. He would tell you that the foreground had
also once been the top of the fall, and that the vertical fissures on
the right of it were evidently then the channel of a side stream. He
would tell you that the fall was then much lower than it is now, and
that being lower, it had less force, and cut itself a narrower bed; and
that the spot where it reached the higher precipice is marked by the
expansion of the wide basin which its increased violence has excavated,
and by the gradually increasing concavity of the rocks below, which we
see have been hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the
water. But neither he nor I could tell you with what exquisite and
finished marking of every fragment and particle of soil or rock, both in
its own structure and the evidence it bears of these great influences,
the whole of this is confirmed and carried out.
With this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the foreground
of the Llanthony. These latter are not divided by joints, but into thin
horizontal and united beds, which the § 25. Beautiful instance of an
exception to general rules in the Llanthony.torrent in its times of
flood has chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with the
sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges. And here we have an
instance of an exception to a general rule, occasioned by particular and
local action. We have seen that the action of water over any surface
universally, whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent,
induces convexity of form. But when we have rocks in situ, as here,
exposed at their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will
cut a vault or circular space for itself, (as we saw on a large scale with the high waterfall,) and we have a concave curve
interrupting the general contours of the rock. And thus Turner (while
every edge of his masses is rounded, and, the moment we rise above the
level of the water, all is convex) has interrupted the great contours of
his strata with concave curves, precisely where the last waves of the
torrent have swept against the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing could
more strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge by which every touch
of this consummate artist is regulated, that universal command of
subject which never acts for a moment on anything conventional or
habitual, but fills every corner and space with new evidence of
knowledge, and fresh manifestation of thought.
The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an
illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical § 26. Turner's
drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone.beds of rock, as the upper
fall has of horizontal; but we pass rather to observe, in detached
pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which cannot be
investigated in the grand combinations of general mass.
The blocks of stone which form the foreground of the Ulleswater are, I
believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of
rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous action. Their
surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every
part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depression,
though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this
chiselling of the surface depends. And with all this, every block of
them has individual character, dependent on the expression of the
angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is
retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the
water-worn surface. And what is done here in the most important part of
the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by
Turner with lavish and overwhelming power, in the accumulated débris of
a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for instance, in
the Junction of the Greta and Tees, where he has choked the torrent bed
with a mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and
carelessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study,
(and has evidently been drawn from nature,) chiselled and varied in its
parts, as if it were to be the chief member of a separate
subject; yet without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate
position, or occasioning, throughout the whole accumulated multitude,
the repetition of a single line.
I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception,
applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and
almost countlessly-divided system, about the most § 27. And of
complicated foreground.wonderful, as well as the most characteristic
passages of Turner's foregrounds. It is done not less marvellously,
though less distinctly, in the individual parts of all his broken
ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. The articulation
of such a passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we have already
spoken of at so great length, the Upper Fall of the Tees, might serve us
for a day's study, if we were to go into it part by part; but it is
impossible to do this, except with the pencil; we can only repeat the
same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken unity, and
tell you to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid and retiring
surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by Claude, on flat and equal
edges. You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work; you are
everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these you cannot
tell how—never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the
unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the
picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall.
Finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of Penmaen
Mawr, may be taken as the standard of the representation of soft soil
modelled by descending rain; and may § 28. And of loose soil.serve to
show us how exquisite in character are the resultant lines, and how full
of every species of attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are
wise enough not to scorn the study of them. The higher the mind, it may
be taken as a universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears
to be small or unimportant; and the rank of a painter may always be
determined by observing how he uses, and with what respect he views the
minutiæ of nature. Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small
things, but by making small things great under its influence. He who can
take no interest in what is small, will take false interest in what is
great; he who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a
mountain ridiculous.
It is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these simple
facts of form, as they are illustrated by the slighter works of Turner,
that we can become at all competent to enjoy the § 29. The unison of all
in the ideal foregrounds of the Academy pictures.combination of all, in
such works as the Mercury and Argus, or Bay of Baiæ, in which the mind
is at first bewildered by the abundant outpouring of the master's
knowledge. Often as I have paused before these noble works, I never felt
on returning to them as if I had ever seen them before; for their
abundance is so deep and various that the mind, according to its own
temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of truths
rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a natural scene; and
detects new relations and associations of these truths which set the
whole picture in a different light at every return to it. And this
effect is especially caused by the management of the foreground; for the
more marked objects of the picture may be taken one by one, and thus
examined and known; but the foregrounds of Turner are so united in all
their parts that the eye cannot take them by divisions, but is guided
from stone to stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths totally
different in aspect, according to the direction in which it approaches
them, and approaching them in a different direction, and viewing them as
a part of a new system, every time that it begins its course at a new
point. § 30. And the great lesson to be received from all.One lesson,
however, we are invariably taught by all, however approached or
viewed,—that the work of the Great Spirit of nature is as deep and
unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects,—that the Divine
mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank
and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and
settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the rightly perceiving
mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the same power, the
same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the casting of the clay
as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in
the kindling of the day-star.
I have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the
angular character of rocks,—not because it was false, but because it
was incomplete, and I cannot explain it nor complete it without example.
It is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of hardness
through curves, and of the under tendencies of the inward structure,
which form the true characteristics of rock form; and Salvator, whom
neither here nor elsewhere I have abused enough, is not wrong because he
paints curved rocks, but because his curves are the curves of ribbons
and not of rocks; and the difference between rock curvature and other
curvature I cannot explain verbally, but I hope to do it hereafter by
illustration; and, at present, let the reader study the rock-drawing of
the Mont St. Gothard subject, in the Liber Studiorum, and compare it
with any examples of Salvator to which he may happen to have access. All
the account of rocks here given is altogether inadequate, and I only do
not alter it because I first wish to give longer study to the subject.
A passage which I happened to see in an Essay of Mr. Pyne's, in the
Art-Union, about nature's "foisting rubbish" upon the artist,
sufficiently explains the cause of this decline. If Mr. Pyne will go to
nature, as all great men have done, and as all men who mean to be great
must do, that is not merely to be helped, but to be taught by her;
and will once or twice take her gifts, without looking them in the
mouth, he will most assuredly find—and I say this in no unkind or
depreciatory feeling, for I should say the same of all artists who are
in the habit of only sketching nature, and not studying her—that her
worst is better than his best. I am quite sure that if Mr. Pyne, or
any other painter who has hitherto been very careful in his choice of
subject, will go into the next turnpike-road, and taking the first four
trees that he comes to in the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them
leaf for leaf, as far as may be, and even their smallest boughs with as
much care as if they were rivers, or an important map of a
newly-surveyed country, he will find, when he has brought them all home,
that at least three out of the four are better than the best he ever
invented. Compare Part III. Sect. I. Chap. III. § 12, 13, (the reference
in the note ought to be to Chap. XV. § 7.)
In the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on the
extreme right.
OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY THE ANCIENTS.
Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and
without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we
think of it as the source of all the changefulness § 1. Sketch of the
functions and infinite agency of water.and beauty which we have seen in
clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated
was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as,
in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that
transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen;
then as it exists in the form of the torrent—in the iris which spans
it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline
pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing
river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of
unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless
unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal
element for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal
changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul.
To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water—to lay on canvas as
much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that
water is meant—is, perhaps, the easiest task § 2. The ease with which a
common representation of it may be given. The impossibility of a
faithful one.of art; and even ordinary running or falling water may be
sufficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of projection with a
dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with
judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play
of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water
when it begins to show itself—to give the flashing and rocket-like
velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea
waves, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient—so
mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its motion—with its
variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and wreath has some
peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and
scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of transparent depth
and dark rock below;—to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of man;
to do it even partially, has been granted to but one or two, even of
those few who have dared to attempt it.
As the general laws which govern the appearances of water have equal
effect on all its forms, it would be injudicious to treat the subject in
divisions; for the same forces which govern § 3. Difficulty of properly
dividing the subject.the waves and foam of the torrent, are equally
influential on those of the sea; and it will be more convenient to
glance generally at the system of water-painting of each school and
artist, than to devote separate chapters to the examination of the lake,
river, or sea-painting of all. We shall, therefore, vary our usual plan,
and look first at the water-painting of the ancients; then at that of
the moderns generally; lastly, at that of Turner.
It is necessary in the outset to state briefly one or two of the optical
conditions by which the appearance of the surface of water is affected;
to describe them all would require a separate § 4. Inaccuracy of study
of water-effect among all painters.essay, even if I possessed the
requisite knowledge, which I do not. The accidental modifications under
which general laws come into play are innumerable, and often, in their
extreme complexity, inexplicable, I suppose, even by men of the most
extended optical knowledge. What I shall here state are a few only of
the broadest laws verifiable by the reader's immediate observation, but
of which nevertheless, I have found artists frequently ignorant; owing
to their habit of sketching from nature without thinking or reasoning,
and especially of finishing at home. It is not often, I believe, that an
artist draws the reflections in water as he sees them; over large
spaces, and in weather that is not very calm, it is nearly impossible to
do so; when it is possible, sometimes in haste, and
sometimes in idleness, and sometimes under the idea of improving nature,
they are slurred or misrepresented; it is so easy to give something like
a suggestive resemblance of calm water, that, even when the landscape is
finished from nature, the water is merely indicated as something that
may be done at any time, and then, in the home work, come the cold
leaden grays with some, and the violent blues and greens with others,
and the horizontal lines with the feeble, and the bright touches and
sparkles with the dexterous, and everything that is shallow and
commonplace with all. Now, the fact is, that there is hardly a roadside
pond or pool which has not as much landscape in it as above it. It is
not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart
like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the
tall trees, and the blades of the shaking-grass, and all manner of hues,
of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that
stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not
altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see
the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds.
It is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the
refuse of the street, or the image of the sky—so it is with almost all
other things that we unkindly despise. Now, this farseeing is just the
difference between the great and the vulgar painter; the common man
knows the roadside pool is muddy, and draws its mud; the great painter
sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's
work to follow, but he follows it, cost what it will. And if painters
would only go out to the nearest common and take the nearest dirty pond
among the furze, and draw that thoroughly, not considering that it is
water that they are drawing, and that water must be done in a certain
way; but drawing determinedly what they see, that is to say, all the
trees, and their shaking leaves, and all the hazy passages of disturbing
sunshine; and the bottom seen in the clearer little bits at the edge,
and the stones of it, and all the sky, and the clouds far down in the
middle, drawn as completely, and more delicately they must be, than the
real clouds above, they would come home with such a notion of
water-painting as might save me and every one else all trouble of
writing more about the matter; but now they do nothing of
the kind, but take the ugly, round, yellow surface for granted, or else
improve it, and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but
saddened and gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up
with coarse flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own
eyes, and hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in
touching the pure, inimitable light of waves thrown loose; and so
Canaletto is still thought to have painted canals, and Vandevelde and
Backhuysen to have painted sea, and the uninterpreted streams and
maligned sea hiss shame upon us from all their rocky beds and hollow
shores.
I approach this part of my subject with more despondency than any other,
and that for several reasons; first, the water painting of all the elder
landscape painters, excepting a few of § 5. Difficulty of treating this
part of the subject.the better passages of Claude and Ruysdael, is so
execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad; Claude's and
Ruysdael's best so cold and valueless, that I do not know how to address
those who like such painting; I do not know what their sensations are
respecting sea. I can perceive nothing in Vandevelde or Backhuysen of
the lowest redeeming merit; no power, no presence of intellect—or
evidence of perception—of any sort or kind; no resemblance—even the
feeblest—of anything natural; no invention—even the most sluggish—of
anything agreeable. Had they given us staring green seas with hatchet
edges, such as we see Her Majesty's ships so-and-so fixed into by the
heads or sterns in the first room of the Royal Academy, the admiration
of them would have been comprehensible; there being a natural
predilection in the mind of men for green waves with curling tops, but
not for clay and wool; so that though I can understand, in some sort,
why people admire everything else in old art, why they admire Salvator's
rocks, and Claude's foregrounds, and Hobbima's trees, and Paul Potter's
cattle, and Jan Steen's pans; and while I can perceive in all these
likings a root which seems right and legitimate, and to be appealed to;
yet when I find they can even endure the sight of a Backhuysen on
their room walls (I speak seriously) it makes me hopeless at once. I may
be wrong, or they may be wrong, but at least I can conceive of no
principle or opinion common between us, which either can address or
understand in the other; and yet I am wrong in this want of conception,
for I know that Turner once liked Vandevelde, and I can
trace the evil influence of Vandevelde on most of his early sea
painting, but Turner certainly could not have liked Vandevelde without
some legitimate cause. Another discouraging point is that I cannot
catch a wave, nor Daguerreotype it, and so there is no coming to pure
demonstration; but the forms and hues of water must always be in some
measure a matter of dispute and feeling, and the more so because there
is no perfect or even tolerably perfect sea painting to refer to: the
sea never has been, and I fancy never will be nor can be painted; it is
only suggested by means of more or less spiritual and intelligent
conventionalism; and though Turner has done enough to suggest the sea
mightily and gloriously, after all it is by conventionalism still, and
there remains so much that is unlike nature, that it is always possible
for those who do not feel his power to justify their dislike, on very
sufficient and reasonable grounds; and to maintain themselves
obstinately unreceptant of the good, by insisting on the deficiency
which no mortal hand can supply, and which commonly is most manifest on
the one hand, where most has been achieved on the other.
With calm water the case is different. Facts are ascertainable and
demonstrable there, and by the notice of one or two of the simplest, we
may obtain some notion of the little success and intelligence of the
elder painters in this easier field, and so prove their probable failure
in contending with greater difficulties.
First: Water, of course, owing to its transparency, possesses not a
perfectly reflective surface, like that of speculum metal, but a surface
whose reflective power is dependent on the angle § 6. General laws which
regulate the phenomena of water. First, the imperfection of its
reflective surface.at which the rays to be reflected fall. The smaller
this angle, the greater are the number of rays reflected. Now, according
to the number of rays reflected is the force of the image of objects
above, and according to the number of rays transmitted is the
perceptibility of objects below the water. Hence the visible
transparency and reflective power of water are in inverse ratio. In
looking down into it from above, we receive transmitted rays which
exhibit either the bottom, or the objects floating in the water; or else
if the water be deep and clear, we receive very few rays,
and the water looks black. In looking along water we receive reflected
rays, and therefore the image of objects above it. Hence, in shallow
water on a level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it
becomes more and more obscure as it retires, even though the water do
not increase in depth, and at a distance of twelve or twenty yards—more
or less according to our height above the water—becomes entirely
invisible, lost in the lustre of the reflected surface.
Second: The brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at
which reflection is visible; it is always to be remembered that,
strictly speaking, only light objects are reflected, and § 7. The
inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not affect
bright ones.that the darker ones are seen only in proportion to the
number of rays of light that they can send; so that a dark object
comparatively loses its power to affect the surface of water, and the
water in the space of a dark reflection is seen partially with the image
of the object, and partially transparent. It will be found on
observation that under a bank—suppose with dark trees above showing
spaces of bright sky, the bright sky is reflected distinctly, and the
bottom of the water is in those spaces not seen; but in the dark spaces
of reflection we see the bottom of the water, and the color of that
bottom and of the water itself mingles with and modifies that of the
color of the trees casting the dark reflection.
This is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with water
surface, for by these means a variety of color and a grace and
evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise impossible. Of
course at great distances even the darkest objects cast distinct images,
and the hue of the water cannot be seen, but in near water the
occurrence of its own color modifying the dark reflections, while it
leaves light ones unaffected, is of infinite value.
Take, by way of example, an extract from my own diary at Venice.
"May 17th, 4 p.m. Looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky
and vessels, with this peculiarity; the sky, which is pale blue, is in
its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the
vessels' hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea green,
i.e., the natural color of the water under sunlight; while the orange
masts of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are
reflected without change of color, only not quite so bright as above.
One ship has a white, another a red stripe," (I ought to have said
horizontal along the gunwales,) 'of these the water takes no notice.'
"What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the
water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white;
this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright
reflected sky."
I have left the passage about the white and red stripe, because it will
be useful to us presently; all that I wish to insist upon here is the
showing of the local color (pea green) of the water in the spaces which
were occupied by dark reflections, and the unaltered color of the bright
ones.
Third: Clear water takes no shadow, and that for two reasons; A perfect
surface of speculum metal takes no shadow, § 8. Water takes no
shadow.(this the reader may instantly demonstrate for himself,) and a
perfectly transparent body as air takes no shadow; hence water, whether
transparent or reflective, takes no shadow.
But shadows, or the forms of them, appear on water frequently and
sharply: it is necessary carefully to explain the causes of these, as
they are one of the most eminent sources of error in water painting.
First: Water in shade is much more reflective than water in sunlight.
Under sunlight the local color of the water is commonly vigorous and
active, and forcibly affects, as we have seen, all the dark reflections,
commonly diminishing their depth. Under shade, the reflective power is
in a high degree increased,[61] and it will be found most frequently
that the forms of shadows are expressed on the surface of water, not by
actual shade, but by more genuine reflection of objects above. This is
another most important and valuable circumstance, and we owe to it some
phenomena of the highest beauty.
A very muddy river, as the Arno for instance at Florence, is seen during
sunshine of its own yellow color, rendering all reflections discolored
and feeble. At twilight it recovers its reflective power to
the fullest extent, and the mountains of Carrara are seen reflected in
it as clearly as if it were a crystalline lake. The Mediterranean, whose
determined blue yields to hardly any modifying color in daytime,
receives at evening the image of its rocky shores. On our own seas,
seeming shadows are seen constantly cast in purple and blue, upon pale
green. These are no shadows, but the pure reflection of dark or blue sky
above, seen in the shadowed space, refused by the local color of the sea
in the sunlighted spaces, and turned more or less purple by the
opposition of the vivid green.
We have seen, however, above, that the local color of water, while it
comparatively refuses dark reflections, accepts bright ones without
deadening them. Hence when a shadow is thrown § 9. Modification of dark
reflections by shadow.across a space of water of strong local color,
receiving, alternately, light and dark reflections, it has no power of
increasing the reflectiveness of the water in the bright spaces, still
less of diminishing it; hence, on all the dark reflections it is seen
more or less distinctly, on all the light ones it vanishes altogether.
Let us take an instance of the exquisite complexity of effect induced by
these various circumstances in co-operation.
Suppose a space of clear water showing the bottom under a group of
trees, showing sky through their branches, casting shadows on the
surface of the water, which we will suppose also to possess some color
of its own. Close to us, we shall see the bottom, with the shadows of
the trees clearly thrown upon it, and the color of the water seen in its
genuineness by transmitted light. Farther off, the bottom will be
gradually lost sight of, but it will be seen in the dark reflections
much farther than in the light ones. At last it ceases to affect even
the former, and the pure surface effect takes place. The blue bright sky
is reflected truly, but the dark trees are reflected imperfectly, and
the color of the water is seen instead. Where the shadow falls on these
dark reflections a darkness is seen plainly, which is found to be
composed of the pure clear reflection of the dark trees; when it crosses
the reflection of the sky, the shadow of course, being thus fictitious,
vanishes.
Farther, of course on whatever dust and other foulness may be present in
water, real shadow falls clear and dark in proportion to the
quantity of solid substance present. On very muddy rivers, real shadow
falls in sunlight nearly as sharply as on land; on our own sea, the
apparent shadow caused by increased reflection, is much increased in
depth by the chalkiness and impurity of the water.
Farther, when surface is rippled, every ripple, up to a certain variable
distance on each side of the spectator, and at a certain angle between
him and the sun, varying with the size and shape of the ripples,
reflects to him a small image of the sun. Hence those dazzling fields of
expanding light so often seen upon the sea.
Any object that comes between the sun and these ripples, takes from them
the power of reflecting the sun, and in consequence, all their light;
hence any intervening objects cast apparent shadows upon such spaces of
intense force, and of the exact shape, and in the exact place of real
shadows, and yet which are no more real shadows than the withdrawal of
an image of a piece of white paper from a mirror is a shadow on the
mirror. Farther, in all shallow water, more or less in proportion to its
shallowness, but in some measure, I suppose, up to depths of forty or
fifty fathoms, and perhaps more, the local color of the water depends in
great measure on light reflected from the bottom. This, however, is
especially manifest in clear rivers like the Rhone, where the absence of
the light reflected from below forms an apparent shadow, often visibly
detached some distance from the floating object which casts it.
§ 10. Examples on the water of the Rhone.
The following extract from my
own diary at Geneva, with the subsequent one, which is a continuation of
that already given in part at Venice, will illustrate both this and the
other points we have been stating.
"Geneva, 21st April, Morning.
"The sunlight falls from the cypresses of Rousseau's island straight
towards the bridge. The shadows of the bridge and of the trees fall on
the water in leaden purple, opposed to its general hue of aquamarine
green. This green color is caused by the light being reflected from the
bottom, though the bottom is not seen; as is evident by its becoming
paler towards the middle of the river, where the water
shoals, on which pale part the purple shadow of the small bridge falls
most forcibly, which shadow, however, is still only apparent, being the
absence of this reflected light, associated with the increased
reflective power of the water, which in those spaces reflects blue sky
above. A boat swings in the shoal water; its reflection is cast in a
transparent pea-green, which is considerably darker than the pale
aquamarine of the surface at the spot. Its shadow is detached from it
just about half the depth of the reflection; which, therefore, forms a
bright green light between the keel of the boat and its shadow; where
the shadow cuts the reflection, the reflection is darkest and something
like the true color of the boat; where the shadow falls out of the
reflection, it is of a leaden purple, pale. The boat is at an angle of
about 20° below. Another boat nearer, in deeper water, shows no shadow,
whatsoever, and the reflection is marked by its transparent green, while
the surrounding water takes a lightish blue reflection from the sky."
The above notes, after what has been said, require no comment; but one
more case must be stated belonging to rough water. Every large wave of
the sea is in ordinary circumstances divided into, or rather covered by,
innumerable smaller waves, each of which, in all probability, from some
of its edges or surfaces reflects the sunbeams; and hence result a
glitter, polish, and vigorous light over the whole flank of the wave,
which are, of course, instantly withdrawn within the space of a cast
shadow, whose form, therefore, though it does not affect the great body
or ground of the water in the least, is sufficiently traceable by the
withdrawal of the high lights; also every string and wreath of foam
above or within the wave takes real shadow, and thus adds to the
impression.
I have not stated one-half of the circumstances which produce or
influence effects of shadow on water; but lest I should confuse or weary
the reader, I leave him to pursue the subject for himself; enough having
been stated to establish this general principle, that whenever shadow is
seen on clear water, and, in a measure, even on foul water, it is not,
as on land, a dark shade subduing where it falls the sunny general hue
to a lower tone; but it is a space of an entirely different color,
subject itself, by its susceptibility of reflection, to infinite
varieties of depth and hue, and liable, under certain
circumstances, to disappear altogether; and that, therefore, whenever we
have to paint such shadows, it is not only the hue of the water itself
that we have to consider, but all the circumstances by which in the
position attributed to them such shaded spaces could be affected.
Fourth: If water be rippled, the side of every ripple next to us
reflects a piece of the sky, and the side of every ripple farthest § 11.
Effect of ripple on distant water.from us reflects a piece of the
opposite shore, or of whatever objects may be beyond the ripple. But as
we soon lose sight of the farther sides of the ripples on the retiring
surface, the whole rippled space will then be reflective of the sky
only. Thus, where calm distant water receives reflections of high
shores, every extent of rippled surface appears as a bright line
interrupting that reflection with the color of the sky.
Fifth: When a ripple or swell is seen at such an angle as to afford a
view of its farther side, it carries the reflection of objects farther
down than calm water would. Therefore all motion § 12. Elongation of
reflections by moving water.in water elongates reflections, and throws
them into confused vertical lines. The real amount of this elongation is
not distinctly visible, except in the case of very bright objects, and
especially of lights, as of the sun, moon, or lamps by a river shore,
whose reflections are hardly ever seen as circles or points, which of
course they are on perfectly calm water, but as long streams of
tremulous light.
But it is strange that while we are constantly in the habit of seeing
the reflection of the sun, which ought to be a mere circle, elongated
into a stream of light extending from the horizon to the shore, the
elongation of the reflection of a sail or other object to one-half of
this extent is received, if represented in a picture, with incredulity
by the greater number of spectators. In one of Turner's Venices the
image of the white lateen-sails of the principal boat is about twice as
long as the sails themselves. I have heard the truth of this simple
effect disputed over and over again by intelligent persons, and yet on
any water so exposed as the lagoons of Venice, the periods are few and
short when there is so little motion as that the reflection of sails a
mile off shall not affect the swell within six feet of the spectator.
There is, however, a strange arbitrariness about this elongation of reflection, which prevents it from being truly felt. If we see
on an extent of lightly swelling water surface the image of a bank of
white clouds, with masses of higher accumulation at intervals, the water
will not usually reflect the whole bank in an elongated form, but it
will commonly take the eminent parts, and reflect them in long straight
columns of defined breadth, and miss the intermediate lower parts
altogether; and even in doing this it will be capricious, for it will
take one eminence, and miss another, with no apparent reason; and often
when the sky is covered with white clouds, some of those clouds will
cast long tower-like reflections, and others none, so arbitrarily that
the spectator is often puzzled to find out which are the accepted and
which the refused.
In many cases of this kind it will be found rather that the eye is, from
want of use and care, insensible to the reflection than that the
reflection is not there; and a little thought and careful observation
will show us that what we commonly suppose to be a surface of uniform
color is, indeed, affected more or less by an infinite variety of hues,
prolonged, like the sun image, from a great distance, and that our
apprehension of its lustre, purity, and even of its surface, is in no
small degree dependent on our feeling of these multitudinous hues, which
the continual motion of that surface prevents us from analyzing or
understanding for what they are.
Sixth: Rippled water, of which we can see the farther side of the waves,
will reflect a perpendicular line clearly, a bit of its § 13. Effect of
rippled water on horizontal and inclined images.length being given on
the side of each wave, and easily joined by the eye. But if the line
slope, its reflection will be excessively confused and disjointed; and
if horizontal, nearly invisible. It was this circumstance which
prevented the red and white stripe of the ships at Venice, noticed
above, from being visible.
Seventh: Every reflection is the image in reverse of just so much of the
objects beside the water, as we could see if we were § 14. To what
extent reflection is visible from above.placed as much under the level
of the water as we are actually above it. If an object be so far back
from the bank, that if we were five feet under the water level we could
not see it over the bank, then, standing five feet above the water, we
shall not be able to see its image under the reflected bank.
Hence the reflection of all objects that have any slope back from the
water is shortened, and at last disappears as we rise above it. Lakes
seen from a great height appear like plates of metal set in the
landscape, reflecting the sky but none of their shores.
Eighth: Any given point of the object above the water is reflected, if
reflected at all, at some spot in a vertical line beneath § 15.
Deflection of images on agitated water.it, so long as the plane of the
water is horizontal. On rippled water a slight deflection sometimes
takes place, and the image of a vertical tower will slope a little away
from the wind, owing to the casting of the image on the sloping sides of
the ripples. On the sloping sides of large waves the deflection is in
proportion to the slope. For rough practice, after the slope of the wave
is determined, let the artist turn his paper until it becomes
horizontal, and then paint the reflections of any object upon it as on
level water, and he will be right.
Such are the most common and general optical laws which are to be taken
into consideration in the painting of water. Yet, in the application of
them, as tests of good or bad water painting, § 16. Necessity of
watchfulness as well as of science.
Licenses, how taken by great men.we
must be cautious in the extreme. An artist may know all these laws, and
comply with them, and yet paint water execrably; and he may be ignorant
of every one of them, and, in their turn, and in certain places, violate
every one of them, and yet paint water gloriously. Thousands of
exquisite effects take place in nature, utterly inexplicable, and which
can be believed only while they are seen; the combinations and
applications of the above laws are so varied and complicated that no
knowledge or labor could, if applied analytically, keep pace with them.
Constant and eager watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual
statements of water-effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are
worth more to the painter than the most extended optical knowledge;
without these all his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood. With
these it does not matter how gross or how daring here and there may be
his violations of this or that law; his very transgressions will be
admirable.
It may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in these
days of idleness. I cannot help it; it is true, and must be
affirmed. Of all contemptible criticism, the most to be contemned is
that which punishes great works of art when they fight without armor,
and refuses to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual refracted sun of
their truth, because it has risen at a false angle, and burst upon them
before its appointed time. And yet, on the other hand, let it be
observed that it is not feeling, nor fancy, nor imagination, so called,
that I have put before science, but watchfulness, experience, affection
and trust in nature; and farther let it be observed, that there is a
difference between the license taken by one man and another, which makes
one license admirable, and the other punishable; and that this
difference is of a kind sufficiently discernible by every earnest
person, though it is not so explicable as that we can beforehand say
where and when, or even to whom, the license is to be forgiven. In the
Paradise of Tintoret, in the Academy of Venice, the Angel is seen in the
distance driving Adam and Eve out of the garden. Not, for Tintoret, the
leading to the gate with consolation or counsel; his strange ardor of
conception is seen here as everywhere. Full speed they fly, the angel
and the human creatures; the angel wrapt in an orb of light floats on,
stooped forward in his fierce flight, and does not touch the ground; the
chastised creatures rush before him in abandoned terror. All this might
have been invented by another, though in other hands it would assuredly
have been offensive; but one circumstance which completes the story
could have been thought of or dared by none but Tintoret. The Angel
casts a shadow before him towards Adam and Eve.
Now that a globe of light should cast a shadow is a license, as far as
mere optical matters are concerned, of the most audacious kind. But how
beautiful is the circumstance in its application here, showing that the
angel, who is light to all else around him, is darkness to those whom he
is commissioned to banish forever.
I have before noticed the license of Rubens in making his horizon an
oblique line. His object is to carry the eye to a given point in the
distance. The road winds to it, the clouds fly at it, the trees nod to
it, a flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter points his whip at it,
his horses pull for it, the figures push for it, and the horizon slopes
to it. If the horizon had been horizontal, it would have
embarrassed everything and everybody.
In Turner's Pas de Calais there is a buoy poised on the ridge of a near
wave. It casts its reflection vertically down the flank of the wave,
which slopes steeply. I cannot tell whether this is a license or a
mistake; I suspect the latter, for the same thing occurs not
unfrequently in Turner's seas; but I am almost certain that it would
have been done wilfully in this case, even had the mistake been pointed
out, for the vertical line is necessary to the picture, and the eye is
so little accustomed to catch the real bearing of the reflections on the
slopes of waves that it does not feel the fault.
In one of the smaller rooms of the Uffizii at Florence, off the Tribune,
there are two so-called Claudes; one a pretty wooded landscape, I think
a copy, the other a marine with architecture, § 17. Various licenses or
errors in water painting of Claude, Cuyp, Vandevelde.very sweet and
genuine. The sun is setting at the side of the picture, it casts a long
stream of light upon the water. This stream of light is oblique, and
comes from the horizon, where it is under the sun, to a point near the
centre of the picture. If this had been done as a license, it would be
an instance of most absurd and unjustifiable license, as the fault is
detected by the eye in a moment, and there is no occasion nor excuse for
it. But I imagine it to be an instance rather of the harm of imperfect
science. Taking his impression instinctively from nature, Claude usually
did what is right and put his reflection vertically under the sun;
probably, however, he had read in some treatise on optics that every
point in this reflection was in a vertical plane between the sun and
spectator; or he might have noticed walking on the shore that the
reflection came straight from the sun to his feet, and intending to
indicate the position of the spectator, drew in his next picture the
reflection sloping to the supposed point, the error being excusable
enough, and plausible enough to have been lately revived and
systematized.[62]
In the picture of Cuyp, No. 83 in the Dulwich Gallery, the post at the
end of the bank casts three or four radiating reflections. This is
visibly neither license nor half science, but pure ignorance. Again, in
the picture attributed to Paul Potter, No. 176, Dulwich Gallery, I
believe most people must feel, the moment they look at it, that there is
something wrong with the water, that it looks odd, and hard, and like
ice or lead; and though they may not be able to tell the reason of the
impression—for when they go near they will find it smooth and lustrous,
and prettily painted—yet they will not be able to shake off the
unpleasant sense of its being like a plate of bad mirror set in a model
landscape among moss, rather than like a pond. The reason is, that while
this water receives clear reflections from the fence and hedge on the
left, and is everywhere smooth and evidently capable of giving true
images, it yet reflects none of the cows.
In the Vandevelde (113) there is not a line of ripple or swell in any
part of the sea; it is absolutely windless, and the near boat casts its
image with great fidelity, which being unprolonged downwards informs us
that the calm is perfect, (Rule V.,) and being unshortened informs us
that we are on a level with the water, or nearly so. (Rule VII.) Yet
underneath the vessel on the right, the gray shade which stands for
reflection breaks off immediately, descending like smoke a little way
below the hull, then leaving the masts and sails entirely unrecorded.
This I imagine to be not ignorance, but unjustifiable license.
Vandevelde evidently desired to give an impression of great extent of
surface, and thought that if he gave the reflection more faithfully, as
the tops of the masts would come down to the nearest part of the
surface, they would destroy the evidence of distance, and appear to set
the ship above the boat instead of beyond it. I doubt not in
such awkward hands that such would indeed have been the case, but he is
not on that account to be excused for painting his surface with gray
horizontal lines, as is done by nautically-disposed children; for no
destruction of distance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its
liquidity. It is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an
extent which we might walk upon or play at billiards upon.
Among all the pictures of Canaletto, which I have ever seen, and they
are not a few, I remember but one or two where there is any variation
from one method of treatment of the water. § 18. And Canaletto.He almost
always covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple, composed
of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth sea-green,
covered with a certain number, I cannot state the exact average, but it
varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred and upwards,
according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white concave
touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple.
And, as the canal retires back from the eye, he very geometrically
diminishes the size of his ripples, until he arrives at an even field of
apparently smooth water. By our sixth rule, this rippling water as it
retires should show more and more of the reflection of the sky above it,
and less and less of that of objects beyond it, until, at two or three
hundred yards down the canal, the whole field of water should be one
even gray or blue, the color of the sky receiving no reflections
whatever of other objects. What does Canaletto do? Exactly in proportion
as he retires, he displays more and more of the reflection of
objects, and less and less of the sky, until, three hundred yards away,
all the houses are reflected as clear and sharp as in a quiet lake.
This, again, is wilful and inexcusable violation of truth, of which the
reason, as in the last case, is the painter's consciousness of weakness.
It is one of the most difficult things in the world to express the light
reflection of the blue sky on a distant ripple, and to make the eye
understand the cause of the color, and the motion of the apparently
smooth water, especially where there are buildings above to be
reflected, for the eye never understands the want of the reflection. But
it is the easiest and most agreeable thing in the world to give the
inverted image: it occupies a vast space of otherwise troublesome
distance in the simplest way possible, and is understood by
the eye at once. Hence Canaletto is glad, as any other inferior workman
would be, not to say obliged, to give the reflections in the distance.
But when he comes up close to the spectator, he finds the smooth surface
just as troublesome near, as the ripple would have been far off. It is a
very nervous thing for an ignorant artist to have a great space of
vacant smooth water to deal with, close to him, too far down to take
reflections from buildings, and yet which must be made to look flat and
retiring and transparent. Canaletto, with his sea-green, did not at all
feel himself equal to anything of this kind, and had therefore no
resource but in the white touches above described, which occupy the
alarming space without any troublesome necessity for knowledge or
invention, and supply by their gradual diminution some means of
expressing retirement of surface. It is easily understood, therefore,
why he should adopt this system, which is just what any awkward workman
would naturally cling to, trusting to the inaccuracy of observation of
the public to secure him from detection.
Now in all these cases it is not the mistake or the license itself, it
is not the infringement of this or that law which condemns the picture,
but it is the spirit and habit of mind in § 19. Why unpardonable.which
the license is taken, the cowardice or bluntness of feeling, which
infects every part alike, and deprives the whole picture of vitality.
Canaletto, had he been a great painter, might have cast his reflections
wherever he chose, and rippled the water wherever he chose, and painted
his sea sloping if he chose, and neither I nor any one else should have
dared to say a word against him; but he is a little and a bad painter,
and so continues everywhere multiplying and magnifying mistakes, and
adding apathy to error, until nothing can any more be pardoned in him.
If it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those
multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according to
its position, either the image of the sky or of the silver beaks of the
gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of the
white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be
felt that those waves would have something more of color upon them than
that opaque dead green. Green they are by their own nature,
but it is a transparent and emerald hue, mixing itself with the thousand
reflected tints without overpowering the weakest of them; and thus, in
every one of those individual waves, the truths of color are
contradicted by Canaletto by the thousand.
Venice is sad and silent now, to what she was in his time; the canals
are choked gradually one by one, and the foul water laps more and more
sluggishly against the rent foundations; but even yet, could I but place
the reader at the early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the
market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden color, and let him
watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and
under the shadows of the vine leaves, and show him the purple of the
grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away
in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish
baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on
their wet tawny sides, and above, the painted sails of the fishing
boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, and better than all such
florid color, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last
of the old Venetian race, who yet keep the right Giorgione color on
their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the sallow sensual
degradation of the creatures that live in the cafés of the Piazza, he
would not be merciful to Canaletto any more.
Yet even Canaletto, in relation to the truths he had to paint, is
spiritual, faithful, powerful, compared to the Dutch painters of sea. It
is easily understood why his green paint and concave § 20. The Dutch
painters of sea.touches should be thought expressive of the water on
which the real colors are not to be discerned but by attention, which is
never given; but it is not so easily understood, considering how many
there are who love the sea, and look at it, that Vandevelde and such
others should be tolerated. As I before said, I feel utterly hopeless in
addressing the admirers of these men, because I do not know what it is
in their works which is supposed to be like nature. Foam appears to me
to curdle and cream on the wave sides and to fly, flashing from their
crests, and not to be set astride upon them like a peruke; and waves
appear to me to fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and
not to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is gray,
to have the gray of stormy air mixed with its own deep,
heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the gray of the first coat
of cheap paint on a deal door; and many other such things appear to me
which, as far as I can conjecture by what is admired of marine painting,
appear to no one else; yet I shall have something more to say about
these men presently, with respect to the effect they have had upon
Turner; and something more, I hope, hereafter, with the help of
illustration.
There is a sea-piece of Ruysdael's in the Louvre[63] which, though
nothing very remarkable in any quality of art, is at least forceful,
agreeable, and, as far as it goes, natural; the waves § 21. Ruysdael,
Claude, and Salvator.have much freedom of action, and power of color;
the wind blows hard over the shore, and the whole picture may be studied
with profit as a proof that the deficiency of color and everything else
in Backhuysen's works, is no fault of the Dutch sea. There is sublimity
and power in every field of nature from the pole to the line; and though
the painters of one country are often better and greater, universally,
than those of another, this is less because the subjects of art are
wanting anywhere, than because one country or one age breeds mighty and
thinking men, and another none.
Ruysdael's painting of falling water and brook scenery is also generally
agreeable—more than agreeable it can hardly be considered. There
appears no exertion of mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated
to produce either harm or good by their feeble influence. They are good
furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.
The seas of Claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in ancient
art. I do not say that I like them, because they appear to me selections
of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid and characterless;
but I think that they are exceedingly true to the forms and time
selected, or at least that the fine instances of them are so, of which
there are exceedingly few.
On the right hand of one of the marines of Salvator, in the Pitti
palace, there is a passage of sea reflecting the sunrise, which is
thoroughly good, and very like Turner; the rest of the picture, as the
one opposite to it, utterly virtueless. I have not seen any other
instance of Salvator's painting water with any care, it is usually as
conventional as the rest of his work, yet conventionalism is perhaps
more tolerable in water-painting than elsewhere; and if his trees and
rocks had been good, the rivers might have been generally accepted
without objection.
The merits of Poussin as a sea or water painter may, I think, § 22.
Nicholas Poussin.be sufficiently determined by the Deluge in the Louvre,
where the breaking up of the fountains of the deep is typified by the
capsizing of a wherry over a weir.
In the outer porch of St. Mark's at Venice, among the mosaics on the
roof, there is a representation of the deluge. The ground is dark blue;
the rain is represented in bright white undulating parallel stripes;
between these stripes is seen the massy outline of the ark, a bit
between each stripe, very dark and hardly distinguishable from the sky;
but it has a square window with a bright golden border, which glitters
out conspicuously, and leads the eye to the rest—the sea below is
almost concealed with dead bodies.
On the font of the church of San Frediano at Lucca, there is a
representation of—possibly—the Israelites and Egyptians in the Red
Sea. The sea is typified by undulating bands of stone, each band
composed of three plies (almost the same type is to be seen in the
glass-painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as especially at
Chartres). These bands would perhaps be hardly felt as very aqueous, but
for the fish which are interwoven with them in a complicated manner,
their heads appearing at one side of every band, and their tails at the
other.
Both of these representatives of deluge, archaic and rude as they are, I
consider better, more suggestive, more inventive, and more
natural, than Poussin's. Indeed, this is not saying anything very
depreciatory, as regards the St. Mark's one, for the glittering of the
golden window through the rain is wonderfully well conceived, and almost
deceptive, looking as if it had just caught a gleam of sunlight on its
panes, and there is something very sublime in the gleam of this light
above the floating corpses. But the other instance is sufficiently
grotesque and imperfect, and yet, I speak with perfect seriousness, it
is, I think, very far preferable to Poussin's.
On the other hand, there is a just medium between the meanness and
apathy of such a conception as his, and the extravagance, still more
contemptible, with which the subject has been treated in modern
days.[64] I am not aware that I can refer to any instructive example of
this intermediate course, for I fear the reader is by this time wearied
of hearing of Turner, and the plate of Turner's picture of the deluge is
so rare that it is of no use to refer to it.
It seems exceedingly strange that the great Venetian painters should
have left us no instance, as far as I know, of any marine effects
carefully studied. As already noted, whatever passages of § 23.
Venetians and Florentines. Conclusion.sea occur in their backgrounds are
merely broad extents of blue or green surface, fine in color, and coming
dark usually against the horizon, well enough to be understood as sea,
(yet even that not always without the help of a ship,) but utterly
unregarded in all questions of completion and detail. The water even in
Titian's landscape is almost always violently though grandly
conventional, and seldom forms an important feature. Among the religious
schools very sweet motives occur, but nothing which for a moment can be
considered as real water-painting. Perugino's sea is usually very
beautifully felt; his river in the fresco of S^ta. Maddalena at Florence
is freely indicated, and looks level and clear; the reflections of the
trees given with a rapid zigzag stroke of the brush. On the whole, I
suppose that the best imitations of level water surface to be found in
ancient art are in the clear Flemish landscapes. Cuyp's are
usually very satisfactory, but even the best of these attain nothing
more than the agreeable suggestion of calm pond or river. Of any
tolerable representation of water in agitation, or under any
circumstances that bring out its power and character, I know no
instance; and the more capable of noble treatment the subject happens to
be, the more manifest invariably is the painter's want of feeling in
every effort, and of knowledge in every line.
I state this merely as a fact: I am unable satisfactorily to
account for it on optical principles, and were it otherwise, the
investigation would be of little interest to the general reader, and
little value to the artist.
Parsey's "Convergence of Perpendiculars." I have not space here to
enter into any lengthy exposure of this mistake, but reasoning is
fortunately unnecessary, the appeal to experiment being easy. Every
picture is the representation, as before stated, of a vertical plate of
glass, with what might be seen through it, drawn on its surface. Let a
vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed, whether the
sun be at its side or at its centre, the reflection will always be found
in a vertical line under the sun, parallel with the side of the glass.
The pane of any window looking to sea is all the apparatus necessary for
this experiment, and yet it is not long since this very principle was
disputed with me by a man of much taste and information, who supposed
Turner to be wrong in drawing the reflection straight down at the side
of his picture, as in his Lancaster Sands, and innumerable other
instances.
In the last edition of this work was the following passage:—"I
wish Ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. I believe if he had he
might have saved the unhappy public from much grievous victimizing, both
in mind and pocket, for he would have shown that Vandevelde and
Backhuysen were not quite sea-deities." The writer has to thank the
editor of Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy for pointing out the
oversight. He had passed many days in the Louvre before the above
passage was written, but had not been in the habit of pausing long
anywhere except in the last two rooms, containing the pictures of the
Italian school. The conjecture, however, shows that he had not
ill-estimated the power of Ruysdael; nor does he consider it as in
anywise unfitting him for the task he has undertaken, that for every
hour passed in galleries he has passed days on the seashore.
I am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject as a
landscape only; many mighty examples of its conception occur where the
sea, and all other adjuncts, are entirely subservient to the figures, as
with Raffaelle and M. Angelo.
OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY THE MODERNS.
There are few men among modern landscape painters, who cannot paint
quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. Those who are
incapable of doing this, would scarcely be considered § 1. General power
of the moderns in painting quiet water. The lakes of Fielding.artists at
all; and anything like the ripples of Canaletto, or the black shadows of
Vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising, even in the work
of a novice. Among those who most fully appreciate and render the
qualities of space and surface in calm water, perhaps Copley Fielding
stands first. His expanses of windless lake are among the most perfect
passages of his works; for he can give surface as well as depth, and
make his lake look not only clear, but, which is far more difficult,
lustrous. He is less dependent than most of our artists upon
reflections; and can give substance, transparency, and extent, where
another painter would be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined
in his expression of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple
interrupting the reflection, and by aerial qualities of color. Nothing,
indeed, can be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake
sentiment, were it not for a want of simplicity—a fondness for pretty,
rather than impressive color, and a consequent want of some of the
higher expression of repose.
Hundreds of men might be named, whose works are highly instructive in
the management of calm water. De Wint is singularly powerful and
certain, exquisitely bright and vigorous in § 2. The calm rivers of De
Wint, J. Holland, etc.color. The late John Varley produced some noble
passages. I have seen, some seven years ago, works by J. Holland, which
were, I think, as near perfection as water-color can be carried—for
bona fide truth, refined and finished to the highest degree. But the
power of modern artists is not brought out until they have greater
difficulties to struggle with. Stand for half an hour beside
the fall § 3. The character of bright and violent falling water.of
Schaffhausen, on the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how
the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished velocity,
over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a
dome of crystal twenty feet thick—so swift that its motion is unseen
except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star;
and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the
instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam
burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever
and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps
hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven
away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling
wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water,
paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white
rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over
all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray and
shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves
which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water; their dripping
masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some
stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as
its roar dies away; the dew gushing from their thick branches through
drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads
along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens which chase and
checker them with purple and silver. I believe, when you have stood by
this for half an hour, you will have discovered that there is something
more in nature than has § 4. As given by Nesfield.been given by
Ruysdael. Probably you will not be much disposed to think of any mortal
work at the time; but when you look back to what you have seen, and are
inclined to compare it with art, you will remember—or ought to
remember—Nesfield. He is a man of extraordinary feeling, both for the
color and the spirituality of a great waterfall; exquisitely delicate in
his management of the changeful veil of spray or mist; just in his
curves and contours; and unequalled in color except by Turner. None of
our water-color painters can approach him in the management of the
variable hues of clear water over weeded rocks; but his
feeling for it often leads him a little too far, and, like Copley
Fielding, he loses sight of simplicity and dignity for the sake of
delicacy or prettiness. His waterfalls are, however, unequalled in their
way; and, if he would remember, that in all such scenes there is much
gloom as well as much splendor, and relieve the lustre of his attractive
passages of color with more definite and prevalent grays, and give a
little more substance to parts of his picture unaffected by spray, his
work would be nearly perfect. His seas are also most instructive; a
little confused in chiaroscuro, but refined in form and admirable in
color.
J. D. Harding is, I think, nearly unequalled in the drawing of running
water. I do not know what Stanfield would do; I have never seen an
important piece of torrent drawn by him; but § 5. The admirable
water-drawing of J. D. Harding.I believe even he could scarcely contend
with the magnificent abandon of Harding's brush. There is perhaps
nothing which tells more in the drawing of water than decisive and swift
execution; for, in a rapid touch the hand naturally falls into the very
curve of projection which is the absolute truth; while in slow finish,
all precision of curve and character is certain to be lost, except under
the hand of an unusually powerful master. But Harding has both knowledge
and velocity, and the fall of his torrents is beyond praise; impatient,
chafing, substantial, shattering, crystalline, and capricious; full of
various form, yet all apparently instantaneous and accidental, nothing
conventional, nothing dependent upon parallel lines or radiating curves;
all broken up and dashed to pieces over the irregular rock, and yet all
in unity of motion. § 6. His color; and painting of sea.The color also
of his falling and bright water is very perfect; but in the dark and
level parts of his torrents he has taken up a bad gray, which has hurt
some of his best pictures. His gray in shadows under rocks or dark
reflections is admirable; but it is when the stream is in full light,
and unaffected by reflections in distance, that he gets wrong. We
believe that the fault is in a want of expression of darkness in the
color, making it appear like a positive hue of the water, for which it
is much too dead and cold.
Harding seldom paints sea, and it is well for Stanfield that he does
not, or the latter would have to look to his crown. All that
we have seen from his hand is, as coast sea, quite faultless; we only
wish he would paint it more frequently; always, however, with a veto
upon French fishing-boats. In the Exhibition of 1842, he spoiled one of
the most superb pieces of seashore and sunset which modern art has
produced, with the pestilent square sail of one of these clumsy craft,
which the eye could not escape from.
Before passing to our great sea painter, we must again refer to the
works of Copley Fielding. It is with his sea as with his sky, he can
only paint one, and that an easy one, but it is, for § 7. The sea of
Copley Fielding. Its exceeding grace and rapidity.all that, an
impressive and a true one. No man has ever given, with the same flashing
freedom, the race of a running tide under a stiff breeze, nor caught,
with the same grace and precision, the curvature of the breaking wave,
arrested or accelerated by the wind. The forward fling of his foam, and
the impatient run of his surges, whose quick, redoubling dash we can
almost hear, as they break in their haste upon their own bosoms, are
nature itself, and his sea gray or green was, nine years ago, very
right, as color; always a little wanting in transparency, but never cold
or toneless. Since that time, he seems to have lost the sense of
greenness in water, and has verged more and more on the purple and
black, with unhappy results. His sea was always dependent for effect on
its light or dark relief against the sky, even when it possessed color;
but it now has lost all local color and transparency together, and is
little more than a study of chiaroscuro in an exceedingly ill-chosen
gray. Besides, the perpetual repetition of the same idea is singularly
weakening to the mind. Fielding, in all his life, can only be considered
as having produced one sea picture. The others are duplicates. He
ought to go to some sea of perfect clearness and brilliant color, as
that on the coast of Cornwall, or of the Gulf of Genoa, and study it
sternly in broad daylight, with no black clouds nor drifting rain to
help him out of his difficulties. He would then both learn his strength
and add to it.
But there is one point in all his seas deserving especial praise—a
§ 8. Its high aim at character.marked aim at character. He desires,
especially in his latter works, not so much to produce an agreeable
picture, a scientific piece of arrangement, or delightful
melody of color, as to make us feel the utter desolation, the cold,
withering, frozen hopelessness of the continuous storm and merciless
sea. And this is peculiarly remarkable in his denying himself all color,
just in the little bits which an artist of inferior mind would paint in
sienna and cobalt. If a piece of broken wreck is allowed to rise for an
instant through the boiling foam, though the blue stripe of a sailor's
jacket, or a red rag of a flag would do all our hearts good, we are not
allowed to have it; it would make us too comfortable, and prevent us
from shivering and shrinking as we look, and the artist, with admirable
intention, and most meritorious self-denial, expresses his § 9. But
deficiency in the requisite quality of grays.piece of wreck with a dark,
cold brown. Now we think this aim and effort worthy of the highest
praise, and we only wish the lesson were taken up and acted on by our
other artists; but Mr. Fielding should remember that nothing of this
kind can be done with success unless by the most studied management of
the general tones of the picture; for the eye, deprived of all means of
enjoying the gray hues, merely as a contrast to bright points, becomes
painfully fastidious in the quality of the hues themselves, and demands
for its satisfaction such melodies and richness of gray as may in some
degree atone to it for the loss of points of stimulus. That gray which
would be taken frankly and freely for an expression of gloom, if it came
behind a yellow sail or a red cap, is examined with invidious and
merciless intentness when there is nothing to relieve it, and, if not
able to bear the investigation, if neither agreeable nor variable in its
hue, renders the picture weak instead of impressive, and unpleasant
instead of § 10. Variety of the grays of nature.awful. And indeed the
management of nature might teach him this; for though, when using
violent contrasts, she frequently makes her gloom somewhat monotonous,
the moment she gives up her vivid color, and depends upon her
desolation, that moment she begins to steal the greens into her
sea-gray, and the browns and yellows into her cloud-gray, and the
expression of variously tinted light through all. Nor is Mr. Fielding
without a model in art, for the Land's End, and Lowestoffe, and
Snowstorm, (in the Academy, 1842,) of Turner, are nothing more than
passages of the most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted grays, and yet are
three of the very finest pieces of color that have come from
his hand. And we sincerely hope that Mr. Fielding will gradually feel
the necessity of such studied melodies of quiet color, and will neither
fall back into the old tricks of contrast, nor continue to paint with
purple and ink. If he will only make a few careful studies of gray from
the mixed atmosphere of spray, rain, and mist of a gale that has been
three days hard at work, not of a rainy squall, but of a persevering and
powerful storm, and not where the sea is turned into milk and magnesia
by a chalk coast, but where it breaks pure and green on gray slate or
white granite, as along the cliffs of Cornwall, we think his pictures
would present some of the finest examples of high intention and feeling
to be found in modern art.
The works of Stanfield evidently, and at all times, proceed from the
hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject, and
thorough acquaintance with all the means and § 11. Works of Stanfield.
His perfect knowledge and power.principles of art. We never criticise
them, because we feel, the moment we look carefully at the drawing of
any single wave, that the knowledge possessed by the master is much
greater than our own, and therefore believe that if anything offends us
in any part of the work, it is nearly certain to be our fault, and not
the painter's. The local color of Stanfield's sea is singularly true and
powerful, and entirely independent of any tricks of chiaroscuro. He will
carry a mighty wave up against the sky, and make its whole body dark and
substantial against the distant light, using all the while nothing more
than chaste and unexaggerated local color to gain the relief. His
surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate to a hairbreadth
in every curve; and he is entirely independent of dark skies, deep
blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing want of form, or
atoning for it. He fears no difficulty, desires no assistance, takes his
sea in open daylight, under general sunshine, and paints the element
in its pure color and complete forms. But § 12. But want of feeling.
General sum of truth presented by modern art.we wish that he were less
powerful, and more interesting; or that he were a little less
Diogenes-like, and did not scorn all that he does not want. Now that he
has shown us what he can do without such aids, we wish he would show us
what he can do with them. He is, as we have already said,
wanting in what we have just been praising in Fielding—impressiveness.
We should like him to be less clever, and more affecting—less
wonderful, and more terrible; and as the very first step towards such an
end, to learn how to conceal. We are, however, trenching upon matters
with which we have at present nothing to do; our concern is now only
with truth, and one work of Stanfield alone presents us with as much
concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have lasted
any one of the old masters his life. And let it be especially observed,
how extensive and how varied is the truth of our modern masters—how it
comprises a complete history of that nature of which, from the ancients,
you only here and there can catch a stammering descriptive syllable—how
Fielding has given us every character of the quiet lake, Robson[65] of
the mountain tarn, De Wint of the lowland river, Nesfield of the radiant
cataract, Harding of the roaring torrent, Fielding of the desolate sea,
Stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. Arrange all this in your
mind, observe the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with
the fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then, come with me to
Turner.
I ought before to have alluded to the works of the late G. Robson.
They are a little disagreeable in execution, but there is a feeling of
the character of deep calm water in them quite unequalled, and
different from the works and thoughts of all other men.
OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY TURNER.
I believe it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is
the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and
transparency to water; but that it is next thing to § 1. The difficulty
of giving surface to smooth water.impossible, to give a full impression
of surface. If no reflection be given—a ripple being supposed—the
water looks like lead: if reflection be given, it in nine cases out of
ten looks morbidly clear and deep, so that we always go down into
it, even when the artist most wishes us to glide over it. Now, this
difficulty arises from the very same circumstance which occasions the
frequent failure in effect of the best drawn foregrounds, noticed in
Section II. Chapter III., the change, namely, of focus necessary in the
eye in order to receive § 2. Is dependent on the structure of the eye,
and the focus by which the reflected rays are perceived.rays of light
coming from different distances. Go to the edge of a pond, in a
perfectly calm day, at some place where there is duckweed floating on
the surface,—not thick, but a leaf here and there. Now, you may either
see in the water the reflection of the sky, or you may see the duckweed;
but you cannot, by any effort, see both together. If you look for the
reflection, you will be sensible of a sudden change or effort in the
eye, by which it adapts itself to the reception of the rays which have
come all the way from the clouds, have struck on the water, and so been
sent up again to the eye. The focus you adopt is one fit for great
distance; and, accordingly, you will feel that you are looking down a
great way under the water, while the leaves of the duckweed, though they
lie upon the water at the very spot on which you are gazing so intently,
are felt only as a vague, uncertain interruption, causing a little
confusion in the image below, but entirely indistinguishable as
leaves,—and even their color unknown and unperceived. Unless you think
of them, you will not even feel that anything interrupts
your sight, so excessively slight is their effect. If, on the other
hand, you make up your mind to look for the leaves of the duckweed, you
will perceive an instantaneous change in the effort of the eye, by which
it becomes adapted to receive near rays—those which have only come from
the surface of the pond. You will then see the delicate leaves of the
duckweed with perfect clearness, and in vivid green; but while you do
so, you will be able to perceive nothing of the reflections in the very
water on which they float—nothing but a vague flashing and melting of
light and dark hues, without form or meaning, which, to investigate, or
find out what they mean or are, you must quit your hold of the duckweed,
and plunge down.
Hence it appears, that whenever we see plain reflections of
comparatively distant objects, in near water, we cannot possibly see the
surface, and vice versa; so that when in a painting we § 3. Morbid
clearness occasioned in painting of water by distinctness of
reflections.give the reflections with the same clearness with which they
are visible in nature, we presuppose the effort of the eye to look under
the surface, and, of course, destroy the surface, and induce an effect
of clearness which, perhaps, the artist has not particularly wished to
attain, but which he has found himself forced into, by his reflections,
in spite of himself. And the reason of this effect of clearness
appearing preternatural is, that people are not in the habit of looking
at water with the distant focus adapted to the reflections, unless by
particular effort. We invariably, under ordinary circumstances, use the
surface focus; and, in consequence, receive nothing more than a vague
and confused impression of the reflected colors and lines, however
clearly, calmly, and vigorously all may be defined underneath, if we
choose to look for them. We do not look for them, but glide along over
the surface, catching only playing light and capricious color for
evidence of reflection, except where we come to images of objects close
to the surface, which the surface focus is of course adapted to receive;
and these we see clearly, as of the weeds on the shore, or of sticks
rising out of the water, etc. Hence, the ordinary effect of water is
only to be rendered by giving the reflections of the margin clear and
distinct (so clear they usually are in nature, that it is impossible to
tell where the water begins;) but the moment we touch the
reflection of distant objects, as of high trees or clouds, that instant
we must become vague and uncertain in drawing, and, though vivid in
color and light as the object itself, quite indistinct in form and § 4.
How avoided by Turner.feature. If we take such a piece of water as that
in the foreground of Turner's Chateau of Prince Albert, the first
impression from it is,—"What a wide surface!" We glide over it a
quarter of a mile into the picture before we know where we are, and yet
the water is as calm and crystalline as a mirror; but we are not allowed
to tumble into it, and gasp for breath as we go down,—we are kept upon
the surface, though that surface is flashing and radiant with every hue
of cloud, and sun, and sky, and foliage. But the secret is in the
drawing of these reflections.[66] We cannot tell when we look at them
and for them, what they mean. They have all character, and are
evidently reflections of something definite and determined; but yet they
are all uncertain and inexplicable; playing color and palpitating shade,
which, though we recognize in an instant for images of something, and
feel that the water is bright, and lovely, and calm, we cannot penetrate
nor interpret: we are not allowed to go down to them, and we repose, as
we should in nature, upon the lustre of the level surface. It is in this
power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the
perfection of art here, as in all other cases, consists. But § 5. All
reflections on distant water are distinct.as it was before shown in
Sect. II. Chap. III. that the focus of the eye required little
alteration after the first half mile of distance, it is evident that on
the distant surface of water, all reflections will be seen plainly;
for the same focus adapted to a moderate distance of surface
will receive with distinctness rays coming from the sky, or from any
other distance, however great. Thus we always see the reflection of Mont
Blanc on the Lake of Geneva, whether we take pains to look for it or
not, because the water upon which it is cast is itself a mile off; but
if we would see the reflection of Mont Blanc in the Lac de Chede, which
is close to us, we must take some trouble about the matter, leave the
green snakes swimming upon the surface, and plunge for it. Hence
reflections, if viewed collectively, are always clear in proportion to
the distance of the water on which they are cast. And now look at
Turner's Ulleswater, or any of his distant lake expanses, and you will
find every crag and line of the hills rendered in them with absolute
fidelity, while the near surface shows nothing but a vague confusion of
exquisite and lustrous tint. The reflections even of the clouds will be
given far off, while those of near boats and figures will be confused
and mixed among each other, except just at the water-line.
And now we see what Vandevelde ought to have done with the shadow of
his ship spoken of in the first chapter of this section. In such a calm,
we should in nature, if we had looked § 6. The error of Vandevelde.for
the reflection, have seen it clear from the water-line to the flag on
the mainmast; but in so doing, we should have appeared to ourselves to
be looking under the water, and should have lost all feeling of surface.
When we looked at the surface of the sea,—as we naturally should,—we
should have seen the image of the hull absolutely clear and perfect,
because that image is cast on distant water; but we should have seen the
image of the masts and sails gradually more confused as they descended,
and the water close to us would have borne only upon its surface a maze
of flashing color and indefinite hue. Had Vandevelde, therefore, given
the perfect image of his ship, he would have represented a truth
dependent on a particular effort of the eye, and destroyed his surface.
But his business was to give, not a distinct reflection, but the colors
of the reflection in mystery and disorder upon his near water, all
perfectly vivid, but none intelligible; and had he done so, the eye
would not have troubled itself to search them out; it would not have
cared whence or how the colors came, but it would have felt
them to be true and right, and rested satisfied upon the polished
surface of the clear sea. Of the perfect truth, the best examples I can
give are Turner's Saltash and Castle Upnor.
Be it next observed that the reflection of all near objects is, by our
fifth rule, not an exact copy of the parts of them which we see above
the water, but a totally different view and arrangement § 7. Difference
in arrangement of parts between the reflected object and its image.of
them, that which we should get if we were looking at them from beneath.
Hence we see the dark sides of leaves hanging over a stream, in their
reflection, though we see the light sides above, and all objects and
groups of objects are thus seen in the reflection under different
lights, and in different positions with respect to each other from those
which they assume above; some which we see on the bank being entirely
lost in their reflection, and others which we cannot see on the bank
brought into view. Hence nature contrives never to repeat herself, and
the surface of water is not a mockery, but a new view of what is above
it. And this difference in what is represented, as well as the obscurity
of the representation, is one of the chief sources by which the
sensation of surface is kept up in the reality. The reflection is not so
remarkable, it does not attract the eye in the same degree when it is
entirely different from the images above, as when it mocks them and
repeats them, and we feel that the space and surface have color and
character of their own, and that the bank is one thing and the water
another. It is by not making this change manifest, and giving underneath
a mere duplicate of what is seen above, that artists are apt to destroy
the essence and substance of water, and to drop us through it.
Now one instance will be sufficient to show the exquisite care of Turner
in this respect. On the left-hand side of his Nottingham, the water (a
smooth canal) is terminated by a bank fenced § 8. Illustrated from the
works of Turner.up with wood, on which, just at the edge of the water,
stands a white sign-post. A quarter of a mile back, the hill on which
Nottingham Castle stands rises steeply nearly to the top of the picture.
The upper part of this hill is in bright golden light, and the lower in
very deep gray shadow, against which the white board of the sign-post is
seen entirely in light relief, though, being turned from the light, it
is itself in delicate middle tint, illumined only on the
edge. But the image of all this in the canal is very different. First,
we have the reflection of the piles of the bank, sharp and clear, but
under this we have not what we see above it, the dark base of the
hill, (for this being a quarter of a mile back, we could not see over
the fence if we were looking from below,) but the golden summit of the
hill, the shadow of the under part having no record nor place in the
reflection. But this summit, being very distant, cannot be seen clearly
by the eye while its focus is adapted to the surface of the water, and
accordingly its reflection is entirely vague and confused; you cannot
tell what it is meant for, it is mere playing golden light. But the
sign-post, being on the bank close to us, will be reflected clearly, and
accordingly its distinct image is seen in the midst of this confusion.
But it now is relieved, not against the dark base, but against the
illumined summit of the hill, and it appears, therefore, instead of a
white space thrown out from blue shade, a dark gray space thrown out
from golden light. I do not know that any more magnificent example could
be given of concentrated knowledge, or of the daring § 9. The boldness
and judgment shown in the observance of it.statement of most difficult
truth. For who but this consummate artist would have had courage, even
if he had perceived the laws which required it, to undertake in a single
small space of water, the painting of an entirely new picture, with all
its tones and arrangements altered,—what was made above bright by
opposition to blue, being underneath made cool and dark by opposition to
gold;—or would have dared to contradict so boldly the ordinary
expectation of the uncultivated eye, to find in the reflection a mockery
for the reality? But the reward is immediate, for not only is the change
most grateful to the eye, and most exquisite as composition, but the
surface of the water in consequence of it is felt to be as spacious as
it is clear, and the eye rests not on the inverted image of the material
objects, but on the element which receives them. And we have a farther
instance in this passage of the close study which is required to enjoy
the works of Turner, for another artist might have altered the
reflection or confused it, but he would not have reasoned upon it so as
to find out what the exact alteration must be; and if we had tried to
account for the reflection, we should have found it false or inaccurate.
But the master mind of Turner, without effort, showers its
knowledge into every touch, and we have only to trace out even his
slightest passages, part by part, to find in them the universal working
of the deepest thought, that consistency of every minor truth which
admits of and invites the same ceaseless study as the work of nature
herself.
There is, however, yet another peculiarity in Turner's painting of
smooth water, which, though less deserving of admiration, as being
merely a mechanical excellence, is not less wonderful § 10. The
texture of surface in Turner's painting of calm water.than its other
qualities, nor less unique—a peculiar texture, namely, given to the
most delicate tints of the surface, when there is little reflection from
anything except sky or atmosphere, and which, just at the points where
other painters are reduced to paper, gives to the surface of Turner the
greatest appearance of substantial liquidity. It is impossible to say
how it is produced; it looks like some modification of body color; but
it certainly is not body color used as by other men, for I have seen
this expedient tried over and over again without success; and it is
often accompanied by crumbling touches of a dry brush, which never could
have been put upon body color, and which could not have shown through
underneath it. As a piece of mechanical excellence, it is one of the
most remarkable things in the works of the master; and it brings the
truth of his water-painting up to the last degree of perfection, often
rendering those passages of it the most attractive and delightful, which
from their delicacy and paleness of tint, would have been weak and
papery in the hands of any other man. The best instance of it I can
give, is, I think, the distance of the Devonport with the Dockyards.
After all, however, there is more in Turner's painting of water surface
than any philosophy of reflection, or any peculiarity of means, can
account for or accomplish; there is a § 11. Its united qualities.might
and wonder about it which will not admit of our whys and hows. Take, for
instance, the picture of the Sun of Venice going to Sea, of 1843,
respecting which, however, there are one or two circumstances which may
as well be noted besides its water-painting. The reader, if he has not
been at Venice, ought to be made aware that the Venetian fishing-boats,
almost without exception, carry canvas painted with bright
colors, the favorite design for the centre being either a cross or a
large sun with many rays, the favorite colors being red, orange, and
black, blue occurring occasionally. The radiance of these sails and of
the bright and grotesque vanes at the mast-heads under sunlight is
beyond all painting, but it is strange that, of constant occurrence as
these boats are on all the lagoons, Turner alone should have availed
himself of them. Nothing could be more faithful than the boat which was
the principal object in this picture, in the cut of the sail, the
filling of it, the exact height of the boom above the deck, the
quartering of it with color, finally and especially, the hanging of the
fish-baskets about the bows. All these, however, are comparatively minor
merits, (though not the blaze of color which the artist elicited from
the right use of these circumstances,) but the peculiar power of the
picture was the painting of the sea surface, where there were no
reflections to assist it. A stream of splendid color fell from the boat,
but that occupied the centre only; in the distance, the city and crowded
boats threw down some playing lines, but these still left on each side
of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing but the morning
sky. This was divided by an eddying swell, on whose continuous sides the
local color of the water was seen, pure aquamarine, (a beautiful
occurrence of closely-observed truth,) but still there remained a large
blank space of pale water to be treated, the sky above had no distinct
details and was pure faint gray, with broken white vestiges of cloud: it
gave no help therefore. But there the water lay, no dead gray flat
paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of
indefinite hue, and retiring as regularly and visibly back and far away,
as if there had been objects all over it to tell the story by
perspective. Now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it
is his having done this which made me say above that "no man had ever
painted the surface of calm water but Turner." The San Benedetto,
looking towards Fusina, contained a similar passage, equally fine; in
one of the Canale della Guidecca the specific green color of the water
is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown on it in purple;
all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective blue.
But Turner is not satisfied with this. He is never altogether content unless he can, at the same time that he takes advantage of
all the placidity of repose, tell us something either about the § 12.
Relation of various circumstances of past agitation, etc., by the most
trifling incidents, as in the Cowes.past commotion of the water, or of
some present stirring of tide or current which its stillness does not
show, or give us something or other to think about and reason upon, as
well as to look at. Take a few instances. His Cowes, Isle of Wight, is a
summer twilight about half an hour, or more, after sunset. Intensity of
repose is the great aim throughout, and the unity of tone of the picture
is one of the finest things that Turner has ever done. But there is not
only quietness, there is the very deepest solemnity in the whole of the
light, as well as in the stillness of the vessels; and Turner wishes to
enhance this feeling by representing not only repose, but power in
repose, the emblem, in the sea, of the quiet ships of war. Accordingly,
he takes the greatest possible pains to get his surface polished, calm,
and smooth, but he indicates the reflection of a buoy, floating a full
quarter of a mile off, by three black strokes with wide intervals
between them, the last of which touches the water within twenty yards of
the spectator. Now these three reflections can only indicate the farther
sides of three rises of an enormous swell, and give by their intervals
of separation, a space of from twelve to twenty yards for the breadth of
each wave, including the sweep between them, and this swell is farther
indicated by the reflection of the new moon falling, in a wide zigzag
line. The exceeding majesty which this single circumstance gives to the
whole picture, the sublime sensation of power and knowledge of former
exertion which we instantly receive from it, if we have but acquaintance
with nature enough to understand its language, render this work not only
a piece of the most refined truth, (as which I have at present named
it,) but to my mind, one of the highest pieces of intellectual art
existing.
Again, in the scene on the Loire, with the square precipice and fiery
sunset, in the Rivers of France, repose has been aimed at in the same
way, and most thoroughly given; but the immense § 13. In scenes on the
Loire and Seine.width of the river at this spot makes it look like a
lake or sea, and it was therefore necessary that we should be made
thoroughly to understand and feel that this is not the calm
of still water, but the tranquillity of a majestic current. Accordingly,
a boat swings at anchor on the right; and the stream, dividing at its
bow, flows towards us in two long, dark waves, especial attention to
which is enforced by the one on the left being brought across the
reflected stream of sunshine, which it separates, and which is broken in
the nearer water by the general undulation and agitation caused by the
boat's wake; a wake caused by the waters passing it, not by its going
through the water.
Again, in the Confluence of the Seine and Marne, we have the repose of
the wide river stirred by the paddles of the steamboat, (whose plashing
we can almost hear, for we are especially § 14. Expression of contrary
waves caused by recoil from shore.compelled to look at them by their
being made the central note of the composition—the blackest object in
it, opposed to the strongest light,) and this disturbance is not merely
caused by the two lines of surge from the boat's wake, for any other
painter must have given these, but Turner never rests satisfied till he
has told you all in his power; and he has not only given the receding
surges, but these have gone on to the shore, have struck upon it, and
been beaten back from it in another line of weaker contrary surges,
whose point of intersection with those of the wake itself is marked by
the sudden subdivision and disorder of the waves of the wake on the
extreme left, and whose reverted direction is exquisitely given where
their lines cross the calm water, close to the spectator, and marked
also by the sudden vertical spring of the spray just where they
intersect the swell from the boat; and in order that we may fully be
able to account for these reverted waves, we are allowed, just at the
extreme right-hand limit of the picture, to see the point where the
swell from the boat meets the shore. In the Chaise de Gargantua we have
the still water lulled by the dead calm which usually precedes the most
violent storms, suddenly broken upon by a tremendous burst of wind from
the gathered thunder-clouds, scattering the boats, and raising the § 15.
Various other instances.water into rage, except where it is sheltered by
the hills. In the Jumieges and Vernon we have farther instances of local
agitation, caused, in the one instance, by a steamer, in the other, by
the large water-wheels under the bridge, not, observe, a
mere splashing about the wheel itself, this is too far off to be
noticeable, so that we should not have even known that the objects
beneath the bridge were water-wheels, but for the agitation recorded a
quarter of a mile down the river, where its current crosses the
sunlight. And thus there will scarcely ever be found a piece of quiet
water by Turner, without some story in it of one kind or another;
sometimes a slight, but beautiful incident—oftener, as in the Cowes,
something on which the whole sentiment and intention of the picture in a
great degree depends; but invariably presenting some new instance of
varied knowledge and observation, some fresh appeal to the highest
faculties of the mind.
Of extended surfaces of water, as rendered by Turner, the Loch Katrine
and Derwent-water, of the Illustrations to Scott, and the Loch Lomond,
vignette in Rogers's Poems, are characteristic § 16. Turner's painting
of distant expanses of water. Calm, interrupted by ripple.instances. The
first of these gives us the most distant part of the lake entirely under
the influence of a light breeze, and therefore entirely without
reflections of the objects on its borders; but the whole near half is
untouched by the wind, and on that is cast the image of the upper part
of Ben-Venue and of the islands. The second gives us the surface, with
just so much motion upon it as to prolong, but not to destroy, the
reflections of the dark woods,—reflections only interrupted by the
ripple § 17. And ripple, crossed by sunshine.of the boat's wake. And the
third gives us an example of the whole surface so much affected by
ripple as to bring into exercise all those laws which we have seen so
grossly violated by Canaletto. We see in the nearest boat that though
the lines of the gunwale are much blacker and more conspicuous than that
of the cutwater, yet the gunwale lines, being nearly horizontal, have no
reflection whatsoever; while the line of the cutwater, being vertical,
has a distinct reflection of three times its own length. But even these
tremulous reflections are only visible as far as the islands; beyond
them, as the lake retires into distance, we find it receives only the
reflection of the gray light from the clouds, and runs in one flat white
field up between the hills; and besides all this, we have another
phenomenon, quite new, given to us,—the brilliant gleam of light along
the centre of the lake. This is not caused by ripple, for it
is cast on a surface rippled all over; but it is what we could not have
without ripple,—the light of a passage of sunshine. I have already
(Chap. I., § 9) explained the cause of this phenomenon, which never can
by any possibility take place on calm water, being the multitudinous
reflection of the sun from the sides of the ripples, causing an
appearance of local light and shadow; and being dependent, like real
light and shadow, on the passage of the clouds, though the dark parts of
the water are the reflections of the clouds, not the shadows of them;
and the bright parts are the reflections of the sun, and not the light
of it. This little vignette, then, will entirely complete the system of
Turner's universal truth in quiet water. We have seen every phenomenon
given by him,—the clear reflection, the prolonged reflection, the
reflection broken by ripple, and finally the ripple broken by light and
shade; and it is especially to be observed how careful he is, in this
last case, when he uses the apparent light and shade, to account for it
by showing us in the whiteness of the lake beyond, its universal
subjection to ripple.
We have not spoken of Turner's magnificent drawing of distant rivers,
which, however, is dependent only on more complicated application of the
same laws, with exquisite perspective. The sweeps of river in the
Dryburgh, (Illustrations § 18. His drawing of distant rivers.to Scott,)
and Melrose, are bold and characteristic examples, as well as the Rouen
from St. Catherine's Hill, and the Caudebec, in the Rivers of France.
The only thing which in these works requires particular attention, is
the care with which the height of the observer above the river is
indicated by the loss of the reflections of its banks. This is, perhaps,
shown most clearly in the Caudebec. If we had been on a level with the
river, its whole surface would have been darkened by the reflection of
the steep and high banks; but being far above it, we can see no more of
the image than we could of the hill itself, if it were actually reversed
under the water; and therefore we see that Turner gives us only a narrow
line of dark water, immediately under the precipice, the broad surface
reflecting only the sky. This is also finely shown on the left-hand side
of the Dryburgh.
But all these early works of the artist have been eclipsed by some recent drawings of Switzerland. These latter are not to be
described by any words, but they must be noted here not only § 19. And
of surface associated with mist.as presenting records of lake effect on
grander scale, and of more imaginative character than any other of his
works, but as combining effects of the surface of mist with the surface
of water. Two or three of the Lake of Lucerne, seen from above, give the
melting of the mountain promontories beneath into the clear depth, and
above into the clouds; one of Constance shows the vast lake at evening,
seen not as water, but its surface covered with low white mist, lying
league beyond league in the twilight like a fallen space of moony cloud;
one of Goldau shows the Lake of Zug appearing through the chasm of a
thunder-cloud under sunset, its whole surface one blaze of fire, and the
promontories of the hills thrown out against it, like spectres; another
of Zurich gives the playing of the green waves of the river among white
streams of moonlight: two purple sunsets on the Lake of Zug are
distinguished for the glow obtained without positive color, the rose and
purple tints being in great measure brought by opposition out of browns:
finally, a drawing executed in 1845 of the town of Lucerne from the lake
is unique for its expression of water surface reflecting the clear green
hue of sky at twilight.
It will be remembered that it was said above, that Turner was the only
painter who had ever represented the surface of calm or the force of
agitated water. He obtains this expression § 20. His drawing of falling
water, with peculiar expression of weight.of force in falling or running
water by fearless and full rendering of its forms. He never loses
himself and his subject in the splash of the fall—his presence of mind
never fails as he goes down; he does not blind us with the spray, or
veil the countenance of his fall with its own drapery. A little
crumbling white, or lightly rubbed paper, will soon give the effect of
indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more than foam—she shows beneath
it, and through it, a peculiar character of exquisitely studied form
bestowed on every wave and line of fall; and it is this variety of
definite character which Turner always aims at, rejecting, as much as
possible, everything that conceals or overwhelms it. Thus, in the Upper
Fall of the Tees, though the whole basin of the fall is blue and dim
with the rising vapor, yet the whole attention of the
spectator is directed to that which it was peculiarly difficult to
render, the concentric zones and delicate curves of the falling water
itself; and it is impossible to express with what exquisite accuracy
these are given. They are the characteristic of a powerful stream
descending without impediment or break, but from a narrow channel, so as
to expand as it falls. They are the constant form which such a stream
assumes as it descends; and yet I think it would be difficult to point
to another instance of their being rendered in art. You will find
nothing in the waterfalls even of our best painters, but springing lines
of parabolic descent, and splashing, shapeless foam; and, in
consequence, though they may make you understand the swiftness of the
water, they never let you feel the weight of it; the stream in their
hands looks active, not supine, as if it § 21. The abandonment and
plunge of great cataracts. How given by him.leaped, not as if it fell.
Now water will leap a little way, it will leap down a weir or over a
stone, but it tumbles over a high fall like this; and it is when we
have lost the parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary,—when we have
lost the spring of the fall, and arrived at the plunge of it, that
we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. Where water takes its
first leap from the top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting,
and mathematical, but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape,
and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes out;
it is then that it begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone after
zone in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like,
lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom.
And it is this prostration, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous
power to the air, which is always peculiarly expressed by Turner, and
especially in the case before us; while our other artists, keeping to
the parabolic line, where they do not lose themselves in smoke and foam,
make their cataract look muscular and wiry, and may consider themselves
fortunate if they can keep it from stopping. I believe the majesty of
motion which Turner has given by these concentric catenary lines must be
felt even by those who have never seen a high waterfall, and therefore
cannot appreciate their exquisite fidelity to nature.
In the Chain Bridge over the Tees, this passiveness and
swinging of the water to and fro are yet more remarkable; while we have
another characteristic of a great waterfall given to us, that the wind,
in this instance coming up the valley against the current, takes the
spray up off the edges, and carries it back in little torn, reverted
rags and threads, seen in delicate form against the darkness on the
left. But we must understand a little more about the nature of running
water before we can appreciate the drawing either of this, or any other
of Turner's torrents.
When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much interrupted
by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a pool as it goes
along, it does not acquire a continuous § 22. Difference in the action
of water, when continuous and when interrupted. The interrupted stream
fills the hollows of its bed.velocity of motion. It pauses after every
leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then goes on again; and
if in this comparatively tranquil and rational state of mind it meets
with an obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each side of it with a
little bubbling foam, and goes round; if it comes to a step in its bed,
it leaps it lightly, and then after a little plashing at the bottom,
stops again to take breath. But if its bed be on a continuous slope, not
much interrupted by hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own mass
be so increased by flood that its usual resting-places are not
sufficient for it, but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the
following current, before it has had time to tranquillize itself, it of
course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at
one leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream
becomes one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. Now when water in
this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it,
like a racehorse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it up
and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into it and
comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the sea.
Hence the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed, and all
the lines of the water altered in their nature. The quiet stream is a
succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and springy, and
parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they tumble into the
pool; then we have a space of quiet curdling water, and another similar
leap below. But the stream when it has gained an impetus
takes the shape of its bed, never stops, is equally § 23. But the
continuous stream takes the shape of its bed.deep and equally swift
everywhere, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a
swing, not foaming, nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong
sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge,
with the ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or four
feet above the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, nor
express any concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of
water, without apparent exertion, coming down again as smoothly on the
other side; the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel
lines by its extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the
form of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a line of
fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole river has the appearance
of a deep and raging sea, with this only difference, that the
torrent-waves always break backwards, and sea-waves forwards. § 24. Its
exquisite curved lines.Thus, then, in the water which has gained an
impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangements of curved lines,
perpetually changing from convex to concave, and vice versa, following
every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all
in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of
inorganic forms which nature can possibly produce; for the sea runs too
much into similar and concave curves with sharp edges, but every motion
of the torrent is united, and all its curves are modifications of
beautiful line.
We see, therefore, why Turner seizes on these curved lines of the
torrent, not only as being among the most beautiful forms of nature, but
because they are an instant expression of the § 25. Turner's careful
choice of the historical truth.utmost power and velocity, and tell us
how the torrent has been flowing before we see it. For the leap and
splash might be seen in the sudden freakishness of a quiet stream, or
the fall of a rivulet over a mill-dam; but the undulating line is the
exclusive attribute of the mountain-torrent,[67] whose fall and fury
have made the valleys echo for miles; and thus the moment we
see one of its curves over a stone in the foreground, we know how far it
has come, and how fiercely. And in the drawing we have been speaking of,
the lower fall of the Tees, in the foreground of the Killiecrankie and
Rhymer's Glen, and of the St. Maurice, in Rogers's Italy, we shall find
the most exquisite instances of the use of such lines; but the most
perfect of all in the Llanthony Abbey, § 26. His exquisite drawing of
the continuous torrent in the Llanthony Abbey.which may be considered as
the standard of torrent-drawing. The chief light of the picture here
falls upon the surface of the stream, swelled by recent rain, and its
mighty waves come rolling down close to the spectator, green and clear,
but pale with anger, in gigantic, unbroken, oceanic curves, bending into
each other without break or foam, though jets of fiery spray are cast
into the air along the rocky shore, and rise in the sunshine in dusty
vapor. The whole surface is one united race of mad motion; all the waves
dragged, as I have described, into lines and furrows by their swiftness,
and every one of these fine forms is drawn with the most studied
chiaroscuro of delicate color, grays and greens, as silvery and pure as
the finest passages of Paul Veronese, and with a refinement of execution
which the eye strains itself in looking into. The rapidity and gigantic
force of this torrent, the exquisite refinement of its color, and the
vividness of foam which is obtained through a general middle
tint, render it about the most perfect piece of painting of running
water in existence.
Now this picture is, as was noticed in our former reference to it, full
of expression of every kind of motion: the clouds are in wild haste; the
sun is gleaming fast and fitfully through the § 27. And of the
interrupted torrent in the Mercury and Argus.leaves; the rain drifting
away along the hill-side; and the torrent, the principal object, to
complete the impression, is made the wildest thing of all and not only
wild before us, and with us, but bearing with it in its every motion,
from its long course, the record of its rage. Observe how differently
Turner uses his torrent when the spirit of the picture is repose. In the
Mercury and Argus, we have also a stream in the foreground; but, in
coming down to us, we see it stopping twice in two quiet and glassy
pools, upon which the drinking cattle cast an unstirred image. From the
nearest of these, the water leaps in three cascades into another basin
close to us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its
edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body)
into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping
to drink, with concentric and curdling ripples which divide round the
stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the lip
of the basin. Thus we find, in every case, the system of Turner's truth
entirely unbroken, each phase and phenomenon of nature being recorded
exactly where it is most valuable and impressive.
We have not, however, space to follow out the variety of his
torrent-drawing. The above two examples are characteristic of the two
great divisions or classes of torrents—that whose motion § 28. Various
cases.is continuous, and whose motion is interrupted: all drawing of
running water will resolve itself into the representation of one or
other of these. The descent of the distant stream in the vignette to the
Boy of Egremond is slight, but very striking; and the Junction of the
Greta and Tees, a singular instance of the bold drawing of the
complicated forms of a shallow stream among multitudinous rocks. A still
finer example occurs in a recent drawing of Dazio Grande, on the St.
Gothard, the waves of the Toccia, clear and blue, fretting among the
granite débris which were brought down by the storm that destroyed the
whole road. In the Ivy bridge the subject is the rest of the
torrent in a pool among fallen rocks, the forms of the stones are seen
through the clear brown water, and their reflections mingle with those
of the foliage.
More determined efforts have at all periods been made in sea painting
than in torrent painting, yet less successful. As above § 29. Sea
painting. Impossibility of truly representing foam.stated, it is easy to
obtain a resemblance of broken running water by tricks and dexterities,
but the sea must be legitimately drawn; it cannot be given as utterly
disorganized and confused, its weight and mass must be expressed, and
the efforts at expression of it end in failure with all but the most
powerful men; even with these few a partial success must be considered
worthy of the highest praise.
As the right rendering of the Alps depends on power of drawing snow, so
the right painting of the sea must depend, at least in all coast
scenery, in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. Yet there are
two conditions of foam of invariable occurrence on breaking waves, of
which I have never seen the slightest record attempted; first the thick
creamy curdling overlapping massy form which remains for a moment only
after the fall of the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running up
the beach; and secondly, the thin white coating into which this
subsides, which opens into oval gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over
their whole surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long
dragging streams of white.
It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either of these two
conditions must be immense. The lapping and curdling form is difficult
enough to catch even when the lines of its undulation alone are
considered; but the lips, so to speak, which lie along these lines, are
full, projecting, and marked by beautiful light and shade; each has its
high light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable delicacy, a bright
reflected light and a dark cast shadow; to draw all this requires labor,
and care, and firmness of work, which, as I imagine, must always,
however skilfully bestowed, destroy all impression of wildness,
accidentalism, and evanescence, and so kill the sea. Again, the openings
in the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifications of circular
and oval shapes dragged hither and thither, would be hard enough to draw
even if they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of
which, every one of the openings is seen in undulation on a tossing
surface, broken up over small surges and ripples, and so thrown into
perspectives of the most hopeless intricacy. Now it is not easy to
express the lie of a pattern with oval openings on the folds of drapery.
I do not know that any one under the mark of Veronese or Titian could
even do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much stiffness and
error may be overlooked; not so in sea,—the slightest inaccuracy, the
slightest want of flow and freedom in the line, is attached by the eye
in a moment of high treason, and I believe success to be impossible.
Yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated sea on which both
these forms do not appear, the latter especially, after some time of
storm, extends over their whole surfaces; the reader sees, therefore,
why I said that sea could only be painted by means of more or less
dexterous conventionalisms, since two of its most enduring phenomena
cannot be represented at all.
Again, as respects the form of breakers on an even shore, there is
difficulty of no less formidable kind. There is in them an
irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. Their hollow § 30.
Character of shore-breakers, also inexpressible.surface is marked by
parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and graduated by
reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its
curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical purity and
precision; yet at the top of this curve, when it nods over, there is a
sudden laxity and giving way, the water swings and jumps along the ridge
like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from part to part as it does
through a serpent's body. Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge,
and instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it supports it,
and, drives it back, or scrapes it off, and carries it bodily away; so
that the spray at the top is in a continual transition between forms
projected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried off with
their weight overcome; then at last, when it has come down, who shall
say what shape that may be called, which shape has none of the great
crash where it touches the beach.
I think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. Nobody can
do anything with it. I have seen Copley Fielding come very close to the
jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very
successfully, and without any look of its having been in papers, down
nearly to the beach, but the final fall has no thunder in it. Turner has
tried hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. The moment is given
in the Sidon of the Bible Illustrations, and more elaborately in a
painting of Bamborough; in both these cases there is little foam at the
bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall, yet grand always; and
in the latter picture very beautifully assisted in expression by the
tossing of a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging ashore, and
which the breaker flings into the air as it falls. Perhaps the most
successful rendering of the forms was in the Hero and Leander, but there
the drawing was rendered easier by the powerful effect of light which
disguised the foam.
It is not, however, from the shore that Turner usually studies his sea.
Seen from the land, the curl of the breakers, even in § 31. Their
effect, how injured when seen from the shore.nature, is somewhat uniform
and monotonous; the size of the waves out at sea is uncomprehended, and
those nearer the eye seem to succeed and resemble each other, to move
slowly to the beach, and to break in the same lines and forms.
Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a totally different
impression. Every wave around us appears vast—every one different from
all the rest—and the breakers present, now that we see them with their
backs towards us, the grand, extended, and varied lines of long
curvature, which are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power.
Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual,
changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it appears from
the shore, but of the very same water rising and falling. Of waves that
successively approach and break, each appears to the mind a separate
individual, whose part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by
another; and there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of
restlessness, any more than in any successive and continuous functions
of life and death. But it is when we perceive that it is no succession
of wave, but the same water constantly rising, and crashing, and
recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms and with fresh fury, that
we perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity of its
unwearied rage. The sensation of power is also trebled; for not only is
the vastness of apparent size much increased, but the whole
action is different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward
until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping
exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not now appear to
fall, but to burst upon the shore; which never perishes, but recoils
and recovers.
Aiming at these grand characters of the Sea, Turner almost always places
the spectator, not on the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it,
beyond the first range of the breakers, as in § 32. Turner's expression
of heavy rolling sea.the Land's End, Fowey, Dunbar, and Laugharne. The
latter has been well engraved, and may be taken as a standard of the
expression of fitfulness and power. The grand division of the whole
space of the sea by a few dark continuous furrows of tremendous swell,
(the breaking of one of which alone has strewed the rocks in front with
ruin,) furnishes us with an estimate of space and strength, which at
once reduces the men upon the shore to insects; and yet through this
terrific simplicity there is indicated a fitfulness and fury in the
tossing of the individual lines, which give to the whole sea a wild,
unwearied, reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged multitude,
whose masses act together in frenzy, while not one individual feels as
another. Especial attention is to be directed to the flatness of all the
lines, for the same principle holds in sea which we have seen in
mountains. All the size and sublimity of nature are given not by the
height, but by the breadth of her masses: and Turner, by following her
in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose the elevation of its
surges, adds in a tenfold degree to their power: farther, observe the
peculiar § 33. With peculiar expression of weight.expression of weight
which there is in Turner's waves, precisely of the same kind which we
saw in his waterfall. We have not a cutting, springing, elastic line—no
jumping or leaping in the waves: that is the characteristic of Chelsea
Reach or Hampstead Ponds in a storm. But the surges roll and plunge with
such prostration and hurling of their mass against the shore, that we
feel the rocks are shaking under them; and, to add yet more to this
impression, observe how little, comparatively, they are broken by the
wind; above the floating wood, and along the shore, we have indication
of a line of torn spray; but it is a mere fringe along the
ridge of the surge—no interference with its gigantic body. The wind has
no power over its tremendous unity of force and weight. Finally, observe
how, on the rocks on the left, the violence and swiftness of the rising
wave are indicated by precisely the same lines which we saw were
indicative of fury in the torrent. The water on these rocks is the body
of the wave which has just broken, rushing up over them; and in doing
so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor foam, nor part upon the
rock, but accommodates itself to every one of its swells and hollows,
with undulating lines, whose grace and variety might alone serve us for
a day's study; and it is only where two streams of this rushing water
meet in the hollow of the rock, that their force is shown by the
vertical bound of the spray.
 |
PORT RUYSDAEL.
From a painting by Turner. |
In the distance of this grand picture, there are two waves which
entirely depart from the principle observed by all the rest, and spring
high into the air. They have a message for us § 34. Peculiar action of
recoiling waves.which it is important that we should understand. Their
leap is not a preparation for breaking, neither is it caused by their
meeting with a rock. It is caused by their encounter with the recoil of
the preceding wave. When a large surge, in the act of breaking, just as
it curls over, is hurled against the face either of a wall or of a
vertical rock, the sound of the blow is not a crash nor a roar; it is a
report as loud as, and in every respect similar to, that of a great gun,
and the wave is dashed back from the rock with force scarcely
diminished, but reversed in direction,—it now recedes from the shore,
and at the instant that it encounters the following breaker, the result
is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered by Turner. Such a
recoiling wave will proceed out to sea through ten or twelve ranges of
following breakers, before it is overpowered. The effect of the
encounter is more completely and palpably given in the Quillebœuf, in
the Rivers of France. It is peculiarly instructive here, as informing us
of the nature of the coast, and the force of the waves, far more clearly
than any spray about the rocks themselves could have done. But the § 35.
And of the stroke of a breaker on the shore.effect of the blow at the
shore itself is given in the Land's End, and vignette to Lycidas. Under
favorable circumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy gale,
where the breakers feel the shore underneath them a moment
before they touch the rock, so as to nod over when they strike, the
effect is nearly incredible except to an eyewitness. I have seen the
whole body of the wave rise in one white, vertical, broad fountain,
eighty feet above the sea, half of it beaten so fine as to be borne away
by the wind, the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and falling
back with a weight and crash like that of an enormous waterfall. This is
given most completely in the Lycidas, and the blow of a less violent
wave among broken rocks, not meeting it with an absolute wall, along the
shore of the Land's End. This last picture is a study § 36. General
character of sea on a rocky coast given by Turner in the Land's End.of
sea whose whole organization has been broken up by constant recoils from
a rocky coast. The Laugharne gives the surge and weight of the ocean in
a gale, on a comparatively level shore; but the Land's End, the entire
disorder of the surges when every one of them, divided and entangled
among promontories as it rolls in, and beaten back part by part from
walls of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated
division of a great army, throwing all behind it into disorder, breaking
up the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which in their turn, yet
more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless
confusion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl of
rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage, bounding, and crashing,
and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads of
waves, of which every one is not, be it remembered, a separate surge,
but part and portion of a vast one, actuated by internal power, and
giving in every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous line which
glides over the rocks and writhes in the wind, overwhelming the one, and
piercing the other with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of
lambent fire. And throughout the rendering of all this, there is not one
false curve given, not one which is not the perfect expression of
visible motion; and the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout
with that utmost mastery of art which, through the deepest study of
every line, makes every line appear the wildest child of chance, while
yet each is in itself a subject and a picture different from all else
around. Of the color of this magnificent sea I have before spoken; it is
a solemn green gray, (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness
of twilight,) modulated with the fulness, changefulness, and
sadness of a deep, wild melody.
The greater number of Turner's paintings of open sea belong to a
somewhat earlier period than these drawings; nor, generally speaking,
are they of equal value. It appears to me that the § 37. Open seas of
Turner's earlier times.artist had at that time either less knowledge of,
or less delight in, the characteristics of deep water than of coast sea,
and that, in consequence, he suffered himself to be influenced by some
of the qualities of the Dutch sea-painters. In particular, he borrowed
from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on the near waves, so as to
bring out a stream of light behind; and though he did this in a more
legitimate way than they, that is to say, expressing the light by
touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow as cast on foamy surface,
still the habit has induced much feebleness and conventionality in the
pictures of the period. His drawing of the waves was also somewhat petty
and divided, small forms covered with white flat spray, a condition
which I doubt not the artist has seen on some of the shallow Dutch seas,
but which I have never met with myself, and of the rendering of which
therefore I cannot speak. Yet even in these, which I think among the
poorest works of the painter, the expressions of breeze, motion, and
light, are very marvellous; and it is instructive to compare them either
with the lifeless works of the Dutch themselves, or with any modern
imitations of them, as for instance with the seas of Callcott, where all
the light is white and all the shadows gray, where no distinction is
made between water and foam, or between real and reflective shadow, and
which are generally without evidence of the artists having ever seen the
sea.
Some pictures, however, belonging to this period of Turner are free from
the Dutch infection, and show the real power of the artist. A very
important one is in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton, somewhat
heavy in its forms, but remarkable for the grandeur of distance obtained
at the horizon; a much smaller, but more powerful example is the Port
Ruysdael in the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq., with which I know of no
work at all comparable for the expression of the white, wild, cold,
comfortless waves of northern sea, even though the sea is almost subordinate to the awful rolling clouds. Both these pictures are
very gray. The Pas de Calais has more color, and shows more art than
either, yet is less impressive. Recently, two marines of the same
subdued color have appeared (1843) among his more radiant works. One,
Ostend, somewhat forced and affected, but the other, also called Port
Ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pictures he has produced, and
especially remarkable as being painted without one marked opposition
either of color or of shade, all quiet and simple even to an extreme, so
that the picture was exceedingly unattractive at first sight. The shadow
of the pier-head on the near waves is marked solely by touches
indicative of reflected light, and so mysteriously that when the picture
is seen near, it is quite untraceable, and comes into existence as the
spectator retires. It is thus of peculiar truth and value; and
instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of his earlier time.
Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a
powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and
nights, and to those who have not, I believe it § 38. Effect of sea
after prolonged storm.must be unimaginable, not from the mere force or
size of surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit between
sea and air. The water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, not into
mere creaming foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast,[68] which hang
in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where one curls
over to break, form a festoon like a drapery, from its edge; these are
taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing,
hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as with
snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves
are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them white all
through, as the water is under a great cataract; and their masses, being
thus half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever
they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles
like actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of
its moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as
described above, (Section III. Chapter VI. § 13,) and covers its surface
not merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling
mist; imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very level of
the sea, as I have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and
fragments from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges themselves
in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting
themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent,
through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no
distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,
nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the
heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no
farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract. Suppose
the effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show this
annihilation to itself, and you have the sea picture of the Academy,
1842—the Snowstorm, one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion,
mist, and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner. Of
course it was not understood; his finest works never are; but there was some apology for the public's not comprehending this, for
few people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time,
and when they have, cannot face it. To hold by a mast or a rock, and
watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which few people have
courage to go through. To those who have, it is one of the noblest
lessons of nature.
But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so,
the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship,
the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition of § 39. Turner's noblest
work, the deep open sea in the Slave Ship.1840. It is a sunset on the
Atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and
the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose
themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of sea included
in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high,
nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting
of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm.
Between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the trough
of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and
lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. Along this
fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea
is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic
forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the
illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together
in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the
swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces
of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire,
now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from
above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which
fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the
reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and
blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of
the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of
death upon the guilty[69] ship as it labors amidst the
lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of
blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky
with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight,—and cast
far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the
multitudinous sea.
I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any
single work, I should choose this. Its daring conception—ideal in the
highest sense of the word—is based on the § 40. Its united excellences
and perfection as a whole.purest truth, and wrought out with the
concentrated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely perfect, not
one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every
square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate
as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as
true as they are wonderful;[70] and the whole picture dedicated to the
most sublime of subjects and impressions—(completing thus the perfect
system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by Turner's
works)—the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep,
illimitable Sea.
Not altogether. I believe here, as in a former case, I have
attributed far too much influence to this change of focus. In Turner's
earlier works the principle is not found. In the rivers of the Yorkshire
drawings, every reflection is given clearly, even to the farthest depth,
and yet the surface is not lost, and it would deprive the painter of
much power if he were not sometimes so to represent them, especially
when his object is repose; it being, of course, as lawful for him to
choose one adaptation of the sight as another. I have, however, left the
above paragraphs as first written, because they are true, although I
think they make too much of an unimportant matter. The reader may
attribute to them such weight as he thinks fit. He is referred to § 11
of this chapter, and to § 4 of the first chapter of this section.
On a large scale it is so, but the same lines are to be seen for
the moment whenever water becomes exceedingly rapid, and yet feels the
bottom as it passes, being not thrown up or cast clear of it. In
general, the drawing of water fails from being too interrupted, the
forms flung hither and thither, and broken up and covered with bright
touches, instead of being wrought out in their real unities of
curvature. It is difficult enough to draw a curved surface, even when it
is rough and has texture; but to indicate the varied and sweeping forms
of a crystalline and polished substance, requires far more skill and
patience than most artists possess. In some respects, it is impossible.
I do not suppose any means of art are capable of rightly expressing the
smooth, multitudinous rippling of a rapid rivulet of shallow water,
giving its transparency lustre and fully-developed forms; and the
greater number of the lines and actions of torrent-waves are equally
inexpressible. The effort should, nevertheless, always be made, and
whatever is sacrificed in color, freedom, or brightness, the real
contours ought always in some measure to be drawn, as a careful
draughtsman secures those of flesh, or any other finely-modelled
surface. It is better, in many respects, the drawing should miss of
being like water, than that it should miss in this one respect the
grandeur of water. Many tricks of scratching and dashing will bring out
a deceptive resemblance; the determined and laborious rendering of
contour alone secures sublimity.
The "yesty waves" of Shakspeare have made the likeness familiar,
and probably most readers take the expression as merely equivalent to
"foamy;" but Shakspeare knew better. Sea-foam does not, under ordinary
circumstances, last a moment after it is formed, but disappears, as
above described, in a mere white film. But the foam of a prolonged
tempest is altogether different; it is "whipped" foam,—thick,
permanent, and, in a foul or discolored sea, very ugly, especially in
the way it hangs about the tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted
concretions before the driving wind. The sea looks truly working or
fermenting. The following passage from Fenimore Cooper is an interesting
confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be depended
upon as entirely free from exaggeration:—"For the first time I now
witnessed a tempest at sea. Gales, and pretty hard ones, I had often
seen, but the force of the wind on this occasion as much exceeded that
in ordinary gales of wind, as the force of these had exceeded that of a
whole-sail breeze. The seas seemed crushed; the pressure of the swooping
atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howling over the surface of
the ocean, fairly preventing them from rising; or where a mound of water
did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs
inequalities from the log. When the day returned, a species of lurid,
sombre light was diffused over the watery waste, though nothing was
visible but the ocean and the ship. Even the sea-birds seemed to have
taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent coast, none reappearing with
the dawn. The air was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the
eye could penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a
mile,"—Miles Wattingford. Half a mile is an over-estimate in coast.
She is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near sea is
encumbered with corpses.
There is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, but
not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene
illustrative of the Antiquary,—a sunset light on polished sea. I ought
to have particularly mentioned the sea in the Lowestoffe, as a piece of
the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm, altogether in gray,
which should be especially contrasted, as a piece of color, with the
grays of Vandevelde. And the sea in the Great Yarmouth should have been
noticed for its expression of water in violent agitation, seen in
enormous extent from a great elevation. There is almost every form of
sea in it,—rolling waves dashing on the pier—successive breakers
rolling to the shore—a vast horizon of multitudinous waves—and winding
canals of calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of bright sky
down into their yellow waste. There is hardly one of the views of the
Southern Coast which does not give some new condition or circumstance of
sea.
OF TRUTH OF VEGETATION.
We have now arrived at the consideration of what was, with the old
masters, the subject of most serious and perpetual study. If they do not
give us truth here, they cannot have the faculty § 1. Frequent
occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters.of truth in them;
for foliage is the chief component part of all their pictures, and is
finished by them with a care and labor which, if bestowed without
attaining truth, must prove either their total bluntness of perception,
or total powerlessness of hand. With the Italian school I can scarcely
recollect a single instance in which foliage does not form the greater
part of the picture; in fact, they are rather painters of tree-portrait
than landscape painters; for rocks, and sky, and architecture are
usually mere accessories and backgrounds to the dark masses of laborious
foliage, of which the composition principally consists. Yet we shall be
less detained by the examination of foliage than by our former subjects;
since where specific form is organized and complete, and the occurrence
of the object universal, it is easy, without requiring any laborious
attention in the reader, to demonstrate to him quite as much of the
truth or falsehood of various representations of it, as may serve to
determine the character and rank of the painter.
It will be best to begin as nature does, with the stems and branches,
and then to put the leaves on. And in speaking of trees generally, be it
observed, when I say all trees, I mean only those ordinary forest or
copse trees of Europe, which are the chief subjects of the
landscape painter. I do not mean to include every kind of foliage which
by any accident can find its way into a picture, but the ordinary trees
of Europe,—oak, elm, ash, hazel, willow, birch, beech, poplar,
chestnut, pine, mulberry, olive, ilex, carubbe, and such others. I do
not purpose to examine the characteristics of each tree; it will be
enough § 2. Laws common to all forest trees. Their branches do not
taper, but only divide.to observe the laws common to all. First, then,
neither the stems nor the boughs of any of the above trees taper,
except where they fork. Wherever a stem sends off a branch, or a branch
a lesser bough, or a lesser bough a bud, the stem or the branch is, on
the instant, less in diameter by the exact quantity of the branch or the
bough they have sent off, and they remain of the same diameter; or if
there be any change, rather increase than diminish until they send off
another branch or bough. This law is imperative and without exception;
no bough, nor stem, nor twig, ever tapering or becoming narrower towards
its extremity by a hairbreadth, save where it parts with some portion of
its substance at a fork or bud, so that if all the twigs and sprays at
the top and sides of the tree, which are, and have been, could be
united without loss of space, they would form a round log of the
diameter of the trunk from which they spring.
But as the trunks of most trees send off twigs and sprays of light under
foliage, of which every individual fibre takes precisely its own
thickness of wood from the parent stem, and as § 3. Appearance of
tapering caused by frequent buds.many of these drop off, leaving nothing
but a small excrescence to record their existence, there is frequently a
slight and delicate appearance of tapering bestowed on the trunk itself;
while the same operation takes place much more extensively in the
branches, it being natural to almost all trees to send out from their
young limbs more wood than they can support, which, as the stem
increases, gets contracted at the point of insertion, so as to check the
flow of the sap, and then dies and drops off, leaving all along the
bough, first on one side, then on another, a series of small
excrescences, sufficient to account for a degree of tapering, which is
yet so very slight, that if we select a portion of a branch with no real
fork or living bough to divide it or diminish it, the tapering is
scarcely to be detected by the eye; and if we select a portion without such evidences of past ramification, there will be found
none whatsoever.
But nature takes great care and pains to conceal this uniformity in her
boughs. They are perpetually parting with little § 4. And care of nature
to conceal the parallelism.sprays here and there, which steal away their
substance cautiously, and where the eye does not perceive the theft,
until, a little way above, it feels the loss; and in the upper parts of
the tree, the ramifications take place so constantly and delicately,
that the effect upon the eye is precisely the same as if the boughs
actually tapered, except here and there, where some avaricious one,
greedy of substance, runs on for two or three yards without parting with
anything, and becomes ungraceful in so doing.
Hence we see that although boughs may, and must be represented as
actually tapering, they must only be so when they are § 5. The degree of
tapering which may be represented as continuous.sending off foliage and
sprays, and when they are at such a distance that the particular forks
and divisions cannot be evident to the eye; and farther, even in such
circumstances the tapering never can be sudden or rapid. No bough ever,
with appearance of smooth tapering, loses more than one tenth of its
diameter in a length of ten diameters. Any greater diminution than this
must be accounted for by visible ramification, and must take place by
steps, at each fork.
And therefore we see at once that the stem of Gaspar Poussin's tall
tree, on the right of the La Riccia, in the National Gallery, is a
painting of a carrot or a parsnip, not of the trunk of § 6. The trees of
Gaspar Poussin;a tree. For, being so near that every individual leaf is
visible, we should not have seen, in nature, one branch or stem actually
tapering. We should have received an impression of graceful
diminution; but we should have been able, on examination, to trace it
joint by joint, fork by fork, into the thousand minor supports of the
leaves. Gaspar Poussin's stem, on the contrary, only sends off four or
five minor branches altogether, and both it and they taper violently,
and without showing why or wherefore—without parting with a single
twig—without showing one vestige of roughness or excrescence—and
leaving, therefore, their unfortunate leaves to hold on as best they
may. The latter, however, are clever leaves, and support
themselves as swarming bees do, hanging on by each other.
But even this piece of work is a jest to the perpetration of the bough
at the left-hand upper corner of the picture opposite to it,—the View
near Albano. This latter is a representation of § 7. And of the Italian
school generally, defy this law.an ornamental group of elephants' tusks,
with feathers tied to the ends of them. Not the wildest imagination
could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a
tree. It might be the claws of a witch—the talons of an eagle—the
horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable
falsehood which can be told respecting foliage—a piece of work so
barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the
complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old
landscape painters. For I will depart for once from my usual plan, of
abstaining from all assertion of a thing's being beautiful or otherwise;
I will say here, at once, that such drawing as this is as ugly as it is
childish, and as painful as it is false; and that the man who could
tolerate, much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his
canvas, had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute or
excellence of God's works. He might have drawn the other stem in
excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to
improve upon nature; but this is conclusive and unpardonable. Again,
take the stem of the chief tree in Claude's Narcissus. It is a very
faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor, with a handsome tail; the
kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding-schools
represent with nosegays at the top of them, by way of forest scenery.
Let us refresh ourselves for a moment, by looking at the truth. We need
not go to Turner, we will go to the man who, next to him, is
unquestionably the greatest master of foliage in § 8. The truth, as it
is given by J. D. Harding.Europe—J. D. Harding. Take the trunk of the
largest stone-pine, Plate 25, in the Park and the Forest. For the first
nine or ten feet from the ground it does not lose one hairbreadth of its
diameter. But the shoot, broken off just under the crossing part of the
distant tree, is followed by an instant diminution of the trunk,
perfectly appreciable both by the eye and the compasses. Again, the stem
maintains undiminished thickness, up to the two shoots on the left, from the loss of which it suffers again perceptibly. On the
right, immediately above, is the stump of a very large bough, whose loss
reduces the trunk suddenly to about two-thirds of what it was at the
root. Diminished again, less considerably, by the minor branch close to
this stump, it now retains its diameter up to the three branches, broken
off just under the head, where it once more loses in diameter, and
finally branches into the multitude of head-boughs, of which not one
will be found tapering in any part, but losing themselves gradually by
division among their offshoots and spray. This is nature, and beauty
too.
But the old masters are not satisfied with drawing carrots for boughs.
Nature can be violated in more ways than one, and the industry with
which they seek out and adopt every conceivable § 9. Boughs, in
consequence of this law, must diminish where they divide. Those of the
old masters often do not.mode of contradicting her is matter of no small
interest. It is evident, from what we have above stated of the structure
of all trees, that as no boughs diminish where they do not fork, so they
cannot fork without diminishing. It is impossible that the smallest
shoot can be sent out of a bough without a diminution of the diameter
above it; and wherever a branch goes off it must not only be less in
diameter than the bough from which it springs, but the bough beyond the
fork must be less by precisely the quantity of the branch it has sent
off.[71] Now observe the bough underneath the first bend of the great
stem in Claude's Narcissus; it sends off four branches like the ribs of
a leaf. The two lowest of these are both quite as thick as the parent
stem, and the stem itself is much thicker after it has sent off the
first one than it was before. The top boughs of the central tree, in the
Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, ramify in the same scientific way.
But there are further conclusions to be drawn from this great principle
in trees. As they only diminish where they divide, their increase of
number is in precise proportion to their diminution § 10. Boughs must
multiply as they diminish. Those of the old masters do not.of size, so
that whenever we come to the extremities of boughs, we must have a
multitude of sprays sufficient to make up, if they were united, the bulk
of that from which they spring. Where a bough divides into two equal
ramifications, the diameter of each of the two is about two-thirds that
of the single one, and the sum of their diameters, therefore, one-fourth
greater than the diameter of the single one. Hence, if no boughs died or
were lost, the quantity of wood in the sprays would appear one-fourth
greater than would be necessary to make up the thickness of the trunk.
But the lost boughs remove the excess, and therefore, speaking broadly,
the diameters of the outer boughs put together would generally just make
up the diameter of the trunk. Precision in representing this is neither
desirable nor possible. All that is required is just so much observance
of the general principle as may make the eye feel satisfied that there
is something like the same quantity of wood in the sprays which there is
in the stem. But to do this, there must be, what there always is in
nature, an exceeding complexity of the outer sprays. This complexity
gradually increases towards their extremities, of course exactly in
proportion to the slenderness of the twigs. The slenderer they become,
the more there are of them, until at last, at the extremities of the
tree, they form a mass of intricacy, which in winter, when it can be
seen, is scarcely distinguishable from fine herbage, and is beyond all
power of definite representation; it can only be expressed by a mass of
involved strokes. Also, as they shoot out in every direction, some are
nearer, some more distant; some distinct, some faint; and their
intersections and relations of distance are marked with the most
exquisite gradations of aerial perspective. Now it will be found
universally in the works of Claude, Gaspar, and Salvator, that the
boughs do not get in the least complex or multiplied towards the
extremities—that each large limb forks only into two or three smaller
ones, each of which vanishes into the air without any cause or reason
for such unaccountable conduct—unless that the mass of leaves
transfixed upon it or tied to it, entirely dependent on its
single strength, have been too much, as well they may be, for its powers
of solitary endurance. This total ignorance of tree structure is shown
throughout their works. The Sinon before Priam is an instance of it in a
really fine work of Claude's, but the most gross examples are in the
works of Salvator. It § 11. Bough-drawing of Salvator.appears that this
latter artist was hardly in the habit of studying from nature at all
after his boyish ramble among the Calabrian hills; and I do not
recollect any instance of a piece of his bough-drawing which is not
palpably and demonstrably a made-up phantasm of the studio, the proof
derivable from this illegitimate tapering being one of the most
convincing. The painter is always visibly embarrassed to reduce the
thick boughs to spray, and feeling (for Salvator naturally had acute
feeling for truth) that the bough was wrong when it tapered suddenly, he
accomplishes its diminution by an impossible protraction; throwing out
shoot after shoot until his branches straggle all across the picture,
and at last disappear unwillingly where there is no room for them to
stretch any farther. The consequence is, that whatever leaves are put
upon such boughs have evidently no adequate support, their power of
leverage is enough to uproot the tree; or if the boughs are left bare,
they have the look of the long tentacula of some complicated marine
monster, or of the waving endless threads of bunchy sea-weed, instead of
the firm, upholding, braced, and bending grace of natural boughs. I
grant that this is in a measure done by Salvator from a love of
ghastliness, and that in certain scenes it is in a sort allowable; but
it is in a far greater degree done from pure ignorance of tree
structure, as is sufficiently proved by the landscape of the Pitti
palace, Peace burning the arms of War; where the spirit of the scene is
intended to be quite other than ghastly, and yet the tree branches show
the usual errors in an extraordinary degree; every one of their
arrangements is impossible, and the trunk of the tree could not for a
moment support the foliage it is loaded with. So also in the pictures of
the Guadagni palace. And even where the skeleton look of branches is
justifiable or desirable, there is no occasion for any violation of
natural laws. I have seen more spectral character in the real limbs of a
blasted oak, than ever in Salvator's best monstrosities; more horror is
to be obtained by right combination of inventive line, than
by drawing tree branches as if they were wing-bones of a pterodactyle.
All departure from natural forms to give fearfulness is mere Germanism;
it is the work of fancy, not of imagination,[72] and instantly degrades
whatever it affects to third-rate level. There is nothing more marked in
truly great men, than their power of being dreadful without being false
or licentious. In Tintoret's Murder of Abel, the head of the sacrificed
firstling lies in the corner of the foreground, obscurely sketched in,
and with the light gleaming upon its glazed eyes. There is nothing
exaggerated about the head, but there is more horror got out of it, and
more of death suggested by its treatment, than if he had turned all the
trees of his picture into skeletons, and raised a host of demons to
drive the club.
It is curious that in Salvator's sketches or etchings there is less that
is wrong than in his paintings,—there seems a fresher remembrance of
nature about them. Not so with Claude. It is § 12. All these errors
especially shown in Claude's sketches and concentrated in a work of G.
Poussin's.only by looking over his sketches, in the British Museum, that
a complete and just idea is to be formed of his capacities of error; for
the feeling and arrangement of many of them are those of an advanced
age, so that we can scarcely set them down for what they resemble—the
work of a boy ten years old; and the drawing being seen without any aids
of tone or color to set it off, shows in its naked falsehood. The windy
landscape of Poussin, opposite the Dido and Æneas, in the National
Gallery, presents us, in the foreground tree, with a piece of atrocity
which I think, to any person who candidly considers it, may save me all
farther trouble of demonstrating the errors of ancient art. I do not in
the least suspect the picture: the tones of it, and much of the
handling, are masterly; yet that foreground tree comprises every
conceivable violation of truth which the human hand can commit, or head
invent, in drawing a tree—except only, that it is not drawn root
uppermost. It has no bark, no roughness nor character of stem; its
boughs do not grow out of each other, but are stuck into each other;
they ramify without diminishing, diminish without ramifying, are
terminated by no complicated sprays, have their leaves tied
to their ends, like the heads of Dutch brooms; and finally, and chiefly,
they are evidently not made of wood, but of some soft elastic substance,
which the wind can stretch out as it pleases, for there is not a vestige
of an angle in any one of them. Now, the fiercest wind § 13.
Impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by
wind.that ever blew upon the earth, could not take the angles out of the
bough of a tree an inch thick. The whole bough bends together, retaining
its elbows, and angles, and natural form, but affected throughout with
curvature in each of its parts and joints. That part of it which was
before perpendicular being bent aside, and that which was before
sloping, being bent into still greater inclination, the angle at which
the two parts meet remains the same; or if the strain be put in the
opposite direction, the bough will break long before it loses its angle.
You will find it difficult to bend the angles out of the youngest
sapling, if they be marked; and absolutely impossible, with a strong
bough. You may break it, but you will not destroy its angles. And if you
watch a tree in the wildest storm, you will find that though all its
boughs are bending, none lose their character but the utmost shoots and
sapling spray. Hence Gaspar Poussin, by his bad drawing, does not make
his storm strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust violent,
but his boughs of India-rubber.
These laws respecting vegetation are so far more imperative than those
which were stated respecting water, that the greatest artist cannot
violate them without danger, because they are laws § 14. Bough-drawing
of Titian.resulting from organic structure, which it is always painful
to see interrupted; on the other hand, they have this in common with all
laws, that they may be observed with mathematical precision, yet with no
grateful result; the disciplined eye and the life in the woods are worth
more than all botanical knowledge. For there is that about the growing
of the tree trunk, and that grace in its upper ramification which cannot
be taught, and which cannot even be seen but by eager watchfulness.
There is not an Exhibition passes, but there appear in it hundreds of
elaborate paintings of trees, many of them executed from nature. For
three hundred years back, trees have been drawn with affection by all
the civilized nations of Europe, and yet I repeat boldly, what I before
asserted, that no men but Titian and Turner ever drew the
stem of a tree.
Generally, I think, the perception of the muscular qualities of the tree
trunk incomplete, except in men who have studied the human figure, and
in loose expression of those characters, the painter who can draw the
living muscle seldom fails; but the thoroughly peculiar lines belonging
to woody fibre, can only be learned by patient forest study; and hence
in all the trees of the merely historical painters, there is fault of
some kind or another, commonly exaggeration of the muscular swellings,
or insipidity and want of spring in curvature, or fantasticism and
unnaturalness of arrangement, and especially a want of the peculiar
characters of bark which express the growth and age of the tree; for
bark is no mere excrescence, lifeless and external—it is a skin of
especial significance in its indications of the organic form beneath; in
places under the arms of the tree it wrinkles up and forms fine lines
round the trunk, inestimable in their indication of the direction of
its surface; in others, it bursts or peels longitudinally, and the
rending and bursting of it are influenced in direction and degree by the
under-growth and swelling of the woody fibre, and are not a mere
roughness and granulated pattern of the hide. Where there are so many
points to be observed, some are almost always exaggerated, and others
missed, according to the predilections of the painter. Rembrandt and
Albert Durer have given some splendid examples of woody texture, but
both miss the grace of the great lines. Titian took a larger view and
reached a higher truth, yet (as before noticed) from the habit of
drawing the figure, he admits too much flaccidity and bend, and
sometimes makes his tree trunks look flexible like sea-weed. There is a
peculiar stiffness and spring about the curves of the wood, which
separates them completely from animal curves, and which especially
defies recollection or invention; it is so subtile that it escapes but
too often, even in the most patient study from nature; it lies within
the thickness of a pencil line. Farther, the modes of ramification of
the upper branches are so varied, inventive, and graceful, that the
least alteration of them, even in the measure of a hairbreadth, spoils
them; and though it is sometimes possible to get rid of a troublesome
bough, accidentally awkward, or in some minor respects to
assist the arrangement, yet so far as the real branches are copied, the
hand libels their lovely curvatures even in its best attempts to follow
them.
These two characters, the woody stiffness hinted through muscular line,
and the inventive grace of the upper boughs, have never been rendered
except by Turner; he does not merely § 15. Bough-drawing of Turner.draw
them better than others, but he is the only man who has ever drawn them
at all. Of the woody character, the tree subjects of the Liber Studiorum
afford marked examples; the Cephalus and Procris, scenes near the Grand
Chartreuse and Blair Athol, Juvenile Tricks, and Hedging and Ditching,
may be particularized; in the England series, the Bolton Abbey is
perhaps a more characteristic and thoroughly Turneresque example than
any.
Of the arrangement of the upper boughs, the Æsacus and Hesperie is
perhaps the most consummate example, the absolute truth and simplicity
and freedom from anything like fantasticism or animal form being as
marked on the one hand, as the exquisite imaginativeness of the lines on
the other: among the Yorkshire subjects the Aske Hall, Kirby Lonsdale
Churchyard, and Brignall Church are most characteristic: among the
England subjects the Warwick, Dartmouth Cove, Durham, and Chain Bridge
over the Tees, where the piece of thicket on the right has been well
rendered by the engraver, and is peculiarly expressive of the aerial
relations and play of light among complex boughs. The vignette at the
opening of Rogers's Pleasures of Memory, that of Chiefswood Cottage in
the Illustrations to Scott's Works, and the Chateau de la belle
Gabrielle, engraved for the Keepsake, are among the most graceful
examples accessible to every one; the Crossing the Brook will occur at
once to those acquainted with the artist's gallery. The drawing of the
stems in all these instances, and indeed in all the various and frequent
minor occurrences of such subject throughout the painter's works is
entirely unique, there is nothing of the same kind in art.
Let us, however, pass to the leafage of the elder landscape § 16.
Leafage. Its variety and symmetry.painters, and see if it atones for the
deficiencies of the stems. One of the most remarkable characters of
natural leafage is the constancy with which, while the
leaves are arranged on the spray with exquisite regularity, that
regularity is modified in their actual effect. For as in every group of
leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some
foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one differently turned
and placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though in
themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and differing forms
in the group; and the shadows of some, passing over the others, still
farther disguise and confuse the mass, until the eye can distinguish
nothing but a graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable forms, with
here and there a perfect leaf on the extremity, or a symmetrical
association of one or two, just enough to mark the specific character
and to give unity and grace, but never enough to repeat in one group
what was done in another—never enough to prevent the eye from feeling
that, however regular and mathematical may be the structure of parts,
what is composed out of them is as various and infinite as any other
part of nature. Nor does this take place in general effect only. Break
off an elm bough, three feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table
before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in
the whole bough, (provided you do not twist it about as you work,) you
find one form of a leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even
have one complete. Every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or
curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something
or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look
graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why
it does so, since there is not one line of § 17. Perfect regularity of
Poussin.it like another. Now go to Gaspar Poussin, and take one of his
sprays where they come against the sky; you may count it all round, one,
two, three, four, one bunch; five, six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine,
ten, eleven, twelve, three bunches; with four leaves each,—and such
leaves! every one precisely the same as its neighbor, blunt and round at
the end, (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the
fig-tree,) tied together by the roots, and so fastened on to the
demoniacal claws above described, one bunch to each claw.
But if nature is so various when you have a bough on the table before
you, what must she be when she retires from you, § 18. Exceeding
intricacy of nature's foliage.and gives you her whole mass and
multitude? The leaves then at the extremities become as fine
as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky, a
confusion which you might as well hope to draw sea-sand particle by
particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. This, as it comes down into the
body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always
transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky;
then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined
foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single
leaf on the extremities; then, under these, you get deep passages of
broken, irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty
hollows; the twisted stems glancing through them in their pale and
entangled infinity, and the shafted sunbeams, rained from above, running
along the lustrous leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again
on some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a faint
reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of drooping foliage, the
shadows of the upper boughs running in gray network down the glossy
stems, and resting in quiet checkers upon the glittering earth; but all
penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and
incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and the mystery of
the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some
solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the
type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can
never see.
Now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to Gaspar Poussin's View
near Albano, in the National Gallery. It is the very subject to unite
all these effects,—a sloping bank shaded § 19. How contradicted by the
tree-patterns of G. Poussin.with intertwined forest;—and what has
Gaspar given us? A mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one
interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure in its
interior, or in those parts of it, I should say, which are intended to
represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals,
we have circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size,
shape, and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same
number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another. There are
eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales;
the shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it
recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against which
it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins to decline
again, until the canvas is covered, with about as much intelligence or
feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot, or a
weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. What is there in this, which
the most determined prejudice in favor of the old masters can for a
moment suppose to resemble trees? It is exactly what the most ignorant
beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down,—exactly
the conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst
drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black-lead and
stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a
kitchen-grate well polished.
Oppose to this the drawing even of our somewhat inferior tree-painters.
I will not insult Harding by mentioning his work after it, but take
Creswick, for instance, and match one of his sparkling § 20. How
followed by Creswick.bits of green leafage with this tree-pattern of
Poussin's. I do not say there is not a dignity and impressiveness about
the old landscape, owing to its simplicity; and I am very far from
calling Creswick's good tree-painting; it is false in color and
deficient in mass and freedom, and has many other defects, but it is the
work of a man who has sought earnestly for truth; and who, with one
thought or memory of nature in his heart, could look at the two
landscapes, and receive Poussin's with ordinary patience? Take Creswick
in black and white, where he is unembarrassed by his fondness for
pea-green, the illustrations, for instance, to the Nut-brown Maid, in
the Book of English Ballads. Look at the intricacy and fulness of the
dark oak foliage where it bends over the brook, see how you can go
through it, and into it, and come out behind it to the quiet bit of sky.
Observe the gray, aerial transparency of the stunted copse on the left,
and the entangling of the boughs where the light near foliage detaches
itself. Above all, note the forms of the masses of light. Not things
like scales or shells, sharp at the edge and flat in the middle, but
irregular and rounded, stealing in and out accidentally from the shadow,
and presenting, as the masses of all trees do, in general outline, a
resemblance to the specific forms of the leaves of which they are
composed. Turn over the page, and look into the weaving of
the foliage and sprays against the dark night-sky, how near they are,
yet how untraceable; see how the moonlight creeps up underneath them,
trembling and shivering on the silver boughs above; note also, the
descending bit of ivy on the left, of which only two leaves are made
out, and the rest is confusion, or tells only in the moonlight like
faint flakes of snow.
But nature observes another principle in her foliage more important even
than its intricacy. She always secures an exceeding harmony and repose.
She is so intricate that her § 21. Perfect unity in nature's
foliage.minuteness of parts becomes to the eye, at a little distance,
one united veil or cloud of leaves, to destroy the evenness of which is
perhaps a greater fault than to destroy its transparency. Look at
Creswick's oak again, in its dark parts. Intricate as it is, all is
blended into a cloud-like harmony of shade, which becomes fainter and
fainter, as it retires, with the most delicate flatness and unity of
tone. And it is by this kind of vaporescence, so to speak, by this flat,
misty, unison of parts, that nature, and her faithful followers, are
enabled to keep the eye in perfect repose in the midst of profusion, and
to display beauty of form, wherever they choose, to the greatest
possible advantage, by throwing it across some quiet, visionary passage
of dimness and rest.
It is here that Hobbima and Both fail. They can paint oak leafage
faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose
the truth of all,—lose the very truth of detail at § 22. Total want of
it in Both and Hobbima.which they aim, for all their minute work only
gives two leaves to nature's twenty. They are evidently incapable of
even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf by leaf;
they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass, or obscurity, and
when they come to distance, where it is totally impossible that leaves
should be separately seen, yet, being incapable of conceiving or
rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are reduced to paint
their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad
each. Nevertheless there is a genuine aim in their works, and their
failure is rather to be attributed to ignorance of art, than
to such want of sense for nature as we find in Claude or Poussin; and
when they come close home, we sometimes receive from them fine passages
of mechanical truth.
But let us oppose to their works the group of trees on the left in
Turner's Marly.[73] We have there perfect and ceaseless intricacy § 23.
How rendered by Turner.to oppose to Poussin,—perfect and unbroken
repose to oppose to Hobbima; and in the unity of these the perfection of
truth. This group may be taken as a fair standard of Turner's
tree-painting. We have in it the admirably drawn stems, instead of the
claws or the serpents; full, transparent, boundless intricacy, instead
of the shell pattern; and misty depth of intermingled light and leafage,
instead of perpetual repetition of one mechanical touch.
I have already spoken (Section II. Chapter IV. § 15,) of the way in
which mystery and intricacy are carried even into the nearest leaves of
the foreground, and noticed the want of such § 24. The near leafage of
Claude. His middle distances are good.intricacy even in the best works
of the old masters. Claude's are particularly deficient, for by
representing every particular leaf of them, or trying to do so, he makes
nature finite, and even his nearest bits of leafage are utterly false,
for they have neither shadows modifying their form, (compare Section II.
Chapter III. § 7,) nor sparkling lights, nor confused intersections of
their own forms and lines; and the perpetual repetition of the same
shape of leaves and the same arrangement, relieved from a black ground,
is more like an ornamental pattern for dress than the painting of a
foreground. Nevertheless, the foliage of Claude, in his middle
distances, is the finest and truest part of his pictures, and, on the
whole, affords the best example of good drawing to be found in ancient
art. It is always false in color, and has not boughs enough amongst it,
and the stems commonly look a great deal nearer than any part of it, but
it is still graceful, flexible, abundant, intricate; and, in all but
color and connection with stems, very nearly right. Of the perfect
painting of thick, leafy foreground, Turner's Mercury and
Argus, and Oakhampton, are the standards.[74]
The last and most important truth to be observed respecting trees, is
that their boughs always, in finely grown individuals, bear among
themselves such a ratio of length as to describe with § 25. Universal
termination of trees in symmetrical curves.their extremities a
symmetrical curve, constant for each species; and within this curve all
the irregularities, segments, and divisions of the tree are included,
each bough reaching the limit with its extremity, but not passing it.
When a tree is perfectly grown, each bough starts from the trunk with
just so much wood as, allowing for constant ramification, will enable it
to reach the terminal line; or if by mistake, it start with too little,
it will proceed without ramifying till within a distance where it may
safely divide; if on the contrary it start with too much, it will ramify
quickly and constantly; or, to express the real operation more
accurately, each bough, growing on so as to keep even with its
neighbors, takes so much wood from the trunk as is sufficient to enable
it to do so, more or less in proportion as it ramifies fast
or slowly. In badly grown trees, the boughs are apt to fall short of the
curve, or at least, there are so many jags and openings that its
symmetry is interrupted; and in young trees, the impatience of the upper
shoots frequently breaks the line; but in perfect and mature trees,
every bough does its duty completely, and the line of curve is quite
filled up, and the mass within it unbroken, so that the tree assumes the
shape of a dome, as in the oak, or, in tall trees, of a pear, with the
stalk downmost. The old masters paid no attention whatsoever to § 26.
Altogether unobserved by the old masters. Always given by Turner.this
great principle. They swing their boughs about, anywhere and everywhere;
each stops or goes on just as it likes, nor will it be possible, in any
of their works, to find a single example in which any symmetrical curve
is indicated by the extremities.[75]
But I need scarcely tell any one in the slightest degree acquainted with
the works of Turner, how rigidly and constantly he adheres to this
principle of nature; taking in his highest compositions the perfect
ideal form, every spray being graceful and varied in itself, but
inevitably terminating at the assigned limit, and filling up the curve
without break or gap; in his lower works, taking less perfect form, but
invariably hinting the constant tendency in all, and thus, in spite of
his abundant complexity, he arranges his trees under simpler and grander
forms than any other artist, even among the moderns.
It was above asserted that J. D. Harding is, after Turner, the greatest
master of foliage in Europe; I ought, however, to state that my
knowledge of the modern landscape of Germany is very § 27. Foliage
painting on the Continent.limited, and that, even with respect to France
and Italy, I judge rather from the general tendency of study and
character of mind visible in the annual Exhibition of the
Louvre, and in some galleries of modern paintings at Milan, Venice, and
Florence, than from any detailed acquaintance with the works of their
celebrated painters. Yet I think I can hardly be mistaken. I have seen
nothing to induce me to take a closer survey; no life knowledge or
emotion in any quarter; nothing but the meanest and most ignorant
copyism of vulgar details, coupled with a style of conception resembling
that of the various lithographic ideals on the first leaves of the music
of pastoral ballads. An exception ought, however, to be made in favor of
French etching; some studies in black and white may be seen in the
narrow passages of the Louvre of very high merit, showing great skill
and delicacy of execution, and most determined industry; (in fact, I
think when the French artist fails, it is never through fear of labor;)
nay, more than this, some of them exhibit acute perception of landscape
character and great power of reaching simple impressions of gloom,
wildness, sound, and motion. Some of their illustrated works also
exhibit these powers in a high degree; there is a spirit, fire, and
sense of reality about some of the wood-cuts to the large edition of
Paul and Virginia, and a determined rendering of separate feeling in
each, such as we look for in vain in our own ornamental works.[76] But
the French appear to have no teaching such as might carry them beyond
this; their entire ignorance of color renders the assumption of the
brush instantly fatal, and the false, forced, and impious sentiment of
the nation renders anything like grand composition altogether
impossible.
It is therefore only among good artists of our own school that I think
any fair comparison can be instituted, and I wish to assert Harding's
knowledge of foliage more distinctly, because § 28. Foliage of J. D.
Harding. Its deficiencies.he neither does justice to himself, nor is, I
think, rightly estimated by his fellow-artists. I shall not make any
invidious remarks respecting individuals, but I think it necessary to
state generally, that the style of foliage painting chiefly
characteristic of the pictures on the line of the Royal Academy is of
the most degraded kind;[77] and that, except Turner and
Mulready, we have, as far as I know, no Royal Academician capable of
painting even the smallest portion of foliage in a dignified or correct
manner; all is lost in green shadows with glittering yellow lights,
white trunks with black patches on them, and leaves of no species in
particular. Much laborious and clever foliage drawing is to be found in
the rooms of the New Water-Color Society; but we have no one in any wise
comparable to Harding for thorough knowledge of the subject, for power
of expression in a sketch from nature, or for natural and unaffected
conception in the study.
Maintaining for him this high position, it is necessary that I should
also state those deficiencies which appear to me to conceal his real
power, and in no small degree to prevent his progress.
His over-fondness for brilliant execution I have already noticed. He is
fonder of seeing something tolerably like a tree produced with few
touches, than something very like a tree produced § 29. His brilliancy
of execution too manifest.with many. Now, it is quite allowable that
occasionally, and in portions of his picture, a great artist should
indulge himself in this luxury of sketching, yet it is a perilous
luxury; it blunts the feeling and weakens the hand. I have said enough
in various places respecting the virtues of negligence and of finish,
(compare above the chapter on Ideas of Power in Part I. Sect. II., and
Part III. Sect. I. Ch. X. § 4,) and I need only say here, therefore,
that Harding's foliage is never sufficiently finished, and has at its
best the look of a rapid sketch from nature touched upon at home. In
1843, (I think,) there was a pretty drawing in the rooms of the
Water-Color Society,—the clear green water of a torrent resting among
stones, with copse-like wood on each side, a bridge in the distance, a
white flower (water-lily?) catching the eye in front; the tops of the
trees on the left of this picture were mere broad blots of color dashed
upon the sky and connected by stems. I allow the power necessary to
attain any look of foliage by such means, but it is power abused: by no
such means can any of the higher virtue and impressiveness of foliage be
rendered. In the use of body color for near leaves, his execution is also too hasty; often the touches are mere square or round dots,
which can be understood only for foliage by their arrangement. This
fault was especially marked in the trees of his picture painted for the
Academy two years ago; they were very nearly shapeless, and could not
stand even in courtesy for walnut leaves, for which judging by the make
of the tree, they must have been intended.
His drawing of boughs is, in all points of demonstrable law, right, and
very frequently easy and graceful also; yet it has two eminent faults,
the first, that the flow of the bough is sacrificed § 30. His
bough-drawing and choice of form.to its texture, the pencil checking
itself and hesitating at dots, and stripes, and knots, instead of
following the grand and unbroken tendency of growth: the second, that
however good the arrangement may be as far as regards merely
flexibility, intricacy, and freedom, there are none of those composed
groups of line which are unfailing in nature. Harding's work is not
grand enough to be natural. The drawings in the park and the forest,
are, I believe, almost facsimiles of sketches made from nature; yet it
is evident at once that in all of them nothing but the general lie and
disposition of the boughs has been taken from the tree, and that no
single branch or spray has been faithfully copied or patiently studied.
This want of close study necessarily causes several deficiencies of
feeling respecting general form. Harding's choice is always of tree
forms comparatively imperfect, leaning this way and that, and unequal in
the lateral arrangements of foliage. Such forms are often graceful,
always picturesque, but rarely grand; and when systematically adopted,
untrue. It requires more patient study to attain just feeling of the
dignity and character of a purely formed tree with all its symmetries
perfect.
One more cause of incorrectness I may note, though it is not peculiar to
the artist's tree-drawing, but attaches to his general system of
sketching. In Harding's valuable work on the use of § 31. Local color,
how far expressible in black and white, and with what advantage.the Lead
Pencil, there is one principle advanced which I believe to be false and
dangerous, that the local color of objects is not thereby to be
rendered. I think the instance given is that of some baskets, whose
darkness is occasioned solely by the touches indicating the
wicker-work. Now, I believe, that an essential difference between the
sketch of a great and of a comparatively inferior master is, that the
former is conceived entirely in shade and color, and its masses are
blocked out with reference to both, while the inferior draughtsman
checks at textures and petty characters of object. If Rembrandt had had
to sketch such baskets, he would have troubled himself very little about
the wicker-work; but he would have looked to see where they came dark or
light on the sand, and where there were any sparkling points of light on
the wet osiers. These darks and lights he would have scratched in with
the fastest lines he could, leaving no white paper but at the wet points
of lustre; if he had had time, the wicker-work would have come
afterwards.[78] And I think, that the first thing to be taught to any
pupil, is neither how to manage the pencil, nor how to attain character
of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they are
dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether his lines
be dexterous or slovenly. The result of such study is the immediate
substitution of downright drawing for symbolism, and afterwards a
judicious moderation in the use of extreme lights and darks; for where
local colors are really drawn, so much of what seems violently dark is
found to come light against something else, and so much of what seems
high light to come dark against the sky, that the draughtsman trembles
at finding himself plunged either into blackness or whiteness, and
seeks, as he should, for means of obtaining force without either.
It is in consequence of his evident habit of sketching more with a view
to detail and character than to the great masses, that Harding's
chiaroscuro is frequently crude, scattered, and petty. Black shadows
occur under his distant trees, white high lights on his foreground
rocks, the foliage and trunks are divided by violent oppositions into
separate masses, and the branches lose in spots of moss and
furrowings of bark their soft roundings of delicate form, and their
grand relations to each other and the sky.
It is owing to my respect for the artist, and my belief in his power and
conscientious desire to do what is best, that I have thus extended these
somewhat unkind remarks. On the other § 32. Opposition between great
manner and great knowledge.hand, it is to be remembered, that his
knowledge of nature is most extended, and his dexterity of drawing most
instructive, especially considering his range of subject; for whether in
water, rock, or foliage, he is equally skilful in attaining whatever he
desires, (though he does not always desire all that he ought;) and
artists should keep in mind, that neither grandeur of manner nor truth
of system can atone for the want of this knowledge and this skill.
Constable's manner is good and great, but being unable to draw even a
log of wood, much more a trunk of a tree or a stone, he left his works
destitute of substance, mere studies of effect without any expression of
specific knowledge; and thus even what is great in them has been
productive, I believe, of very great injury in its encouragement of the
most superficial qualities of the English school.
The foliage of David Cox has been already noticed (preface to second
edition.) It is altogether exquisite in color, and in its impressions of
coolness, shade, and mass; of its drawing I cannot § 33. Foliage of Cox,
Fielding, and Cattermole.say anything, but that I should be sorry to see
it better. Copley Fielding's is remarkable for its intricacy and
elegance; it is, however, not free from affectation, and, as has been
before remarked, is always evidently composed in the study. The
execution is too rough and woolly; it is wanting in simplicity,
sharpness, and freshness,—above all in specific character: not,
however, in his middle distances, where the rounded masses of forest and
detached blasted trunks of fir are usually very admirable. Cattermole
has very grand conceptions of general form, but wild and without
substance, and therefore incapable of long maintaining their
attractiveness, especially lately, the execution having become in the
last degree coarse and affected. This is bitterly to be regretted, for
few of our artists would paint foliage better, if he would paint it from
nature, and with reverence.
Hunt, I think, fails, and fails only, in foliage; fails, as the
Daguerreotype does, from over-fidelity; for foliage will not be
imitated, it must be reasoned out and suggested; yet Hunt is § 34. Hunt
and Creswick. Green, how to be rendered expressive of light, and
offensive if otherwise.the only man we have who can paint the real leaf
green under sunlight, and, in this respect, his trees are
delicious,—summer itself. Creswick has sweet feeling, and tries for the
real green too, but, from want of science in his shadows, ends in green
paint instead of green light; in mere local color, instead of color
raised by sunshine. One example is enough to show where the fault lies.
In his picture of the Weald of Kent, in the British Institution this
year, there was a cottage in the middle distance with white walls, and a
red roof. The dark sides of the white walls and of the roof were of the
same color, a dark purple—wrong for both. Repeated inaccuracies of this
kind necessarily deprive even the most brilliant color of all appearance
of sunshine, and they are much to be deprecated in Creswick, as he is
one of the very few artists who do draw from nature and try for
nature. Some of his thickets and torrent-beds are most painfully
studied, and yet he cannot draw a bough nor a stone. I suspect he is too
much in the habit of studying only large views on the spot, and not of
drawing small portions thoroughly. I trust it will be seen that these,
as all other remarks that I have made throughout this volume on
particular works, are not in depreciation of, or unthankfulness for,
what the artist has done, but in the desire that he should do himself
more justice and more honor. I have much pleasure in Creswick's works,
and I am glad always to see them admired by others.
I shall conclude this sketch of the foliage art of England, by mention
of two artists, whom I believe to be representative of a considerable
class, admirable in their reverence and patience § 35. Conclusion. Works
of J. Linnell and S. Palmer.of study, yet unappreciated by the public,
because what they do is unrecommended by dexterities of handling. The
forest studies of J. Linnell are peculiarly elaborate, and, in many
points, most skilful; they fail perhaps of interest, owing to
over-fulness of detail and a want of generalization in the effect; but
even a little more of the Harding sharpness of touch would set off their
sterling qualities, and make them felt. A less known artist, S. Palmer,
lately admitted a member of the Old Water-Color Society, is
deserving of the very highest place among faithful followers of nature.
His studies of foreign foliage especially are beyond all praise for care
and fulness. I have never seen a stone pine or a cypress drawn except by
him; and his feeling is as pure and grand as his fidelity is exemplary.
He has not, however, yet, I think, discovered what is necessary and
unnecessary in a great picture; and his works, sent to the Society's
rooms, have been most unfavorable examples of his power, and have been
generally, as yet, in places where all that is best in them is out of
sight. I look to him, nevertheless, unless he lose himself in
over-reverence for certain conventionalisms of the elder schools, as one
of the probable renovators and correctors of whatever is failing or
erroneous in the practice of English art.
It sometimes happens that a morbid direction of growth will cause
an exception here and there to this rule, the bough swelling beyond its
legitimate size; knots and excrescences, of course, sometimes interfere
with the effect of diminution. I believe that in the laurel, when it
grows large and old, singular instances may be found of thick upper
boughs and over quantity of wood at the extremities. All these accidents
or exceptions are felt as such by the eye. They may occasionally be used
by the painter in savage or grotesque scenery, or as points of contrast,
but are no excuse for his ever losing sight of the general law.
Compare Part III. Sect. II. Chap. IV. § 6, 7.
This group I have before noticed as singularly (but, I doubt not,
accidentally, and in consequence of the love of the two great painters
for the same grand forms) resembling that introduced by Tintoret in the
background of his Cain and Abel.
The above paragraphs I have left as originally written, because
they are quite true as far as they reach; but like many other portions
of this essay, they take in a very small portion of the truth. I shall
not add to them at present, because I can explain my meaning better in
our consideration of the laws of beauty; but the reader must bear in
mind that what is above stated refers, throughout, to large masses of foliage
seen under broad sunshine,—and it has especial reference to Turner's
enormous scale of scene, and intense desire of light. In twilight, when
tree-forms are seen against sky, other laws come into operation, as well
as in subject of narrow limits and near foreground. It is, I think, to
be regretted that Turner does not in his Academy pictures sometimes take
more confined and gloomy subjects, like that grand one, near the
Chartreuse, of the Liber Studiorum, wherein his magnificent power of
elaborating close foliage might be developed; but, for the present, let
the reader, with respect to what has been here said of close foliage,
note the drawing of the leaves in that plate, in the Æsacus and
Hesperie, and the Cephalus, and the elaboration of the foregrounds in
the Yorkshire drawings; let him compare what is said of Turner's foliage
painting above in Part II. Sect. I. Chap. VII. § 40, § 41, and of
Titian's previously, as well as Part III. Sect. I. Chap. VIII., and
Sect. II. Chap. IV. § 21. I shall hereafter endeavor to arrange the
subject in a more systematic manner; but what additional observations I
may have to make will none of them be in any wise more favorable to
Gaspar, Salvator, or Hobbima, than the above paragraphs.
Perhaps in some instances, this may be the case with the trees of
Nicholas Poussin; but even with him the boughs only touch the line of
limit with their central points of extremity, and are not sectors of
the great curve—forming a part of it with expanded extremities, as in
nature. Draw a few straight lines, from the centre to the circumference
of a circle. The forms included between them are the forms of the
individual boughs of a fine tree, with all their ramifications (only the
external curve is not a circle, but more frequently two
parabolas—which, I believe, it is in the oak—or an ellipse.) But each
bough of the old masters is club-shaped, and broadest, not at the
outside of the tree, but a little way towards its centre.
On the other hand, nothing can be more exquisitely ridiculous than
the French illustrations of a second or third-rate order, as those to
the Harmonies of Lamartine.
Of Stanfield's foliage I remember too little to enable me to form
any definite judgment; it is a pity that he so much neglects this noble
element of landscape.
It is true that many of Rembrandt's etchings are merely in line,
but it may be observed that the subject is universally conceived in
light and shade, and that the lines are either merely guides in the
arrangement, or an exquisite indication of the key-notes of shade, on
which the after-system of it is to be based—portions of fragmentary
finish, showing the completeness of the conception.
GENERAL REMARKS RESPECTING THE TRUTH OF TURNER.
We have now arrived at some general conception of the extent of Turner's
knowledge, and the truth of his practice, by the deliberate examination
of the characteristics of the four great § 1. No necessity of entering
into discussion of architectural truth.elements of landscape—sky,
earth, water, and vegetation. I have not thought it necessary to devote
a chapter to architecture, because enough has been said on this subject
in Part II. Sect. I. Chap. VII.; and its general truths, which are those
with which the landscape painter, as such, is chiefly concerned, require
only a simple and straightforward application of those rules of which
every other material object of a landscape has required a most difficult
and complicated application. Turner's knowledge of perspective probably
adds to his power in the arrangement of every order of subject; but
ignorance on this head is rather disgraceful than knowledge meritorious.
It is disgraceful, for instance, that any man should commit such
palpable and atrocious errors in ordinary perspective as are seen in the
quay in Claude's sea-piece, No. 14, National Gallery, or in the curved
portico of No. 30; but still these are not points to be taken into
consideration as having anything to do with artistical rank, just as,
though we should say it was disgraceful if a great poet could not spell,
we should not consider such a defect as in any way taking from his
poetical rank. Neither is there anything particularly belonging to
architecture, as such, which it is any credit to an artist to observe or
represent; it is only a simple and clear field for the manifestation of
his knowledge of general laws. Any surveyor or engineer could have drawn
the steps and balustrade in the Hero and Leander, as well as Turner has;
but there is no man living but himself who could have thrown the
accidental shadows upon them. I may, however, refer for general
illustration of Turner's power as an architectural
draughtsman, to the front of Rouen Cathedral, engraved in the Rivers of
France, and to the Ely in the England. I know nothing in art which can
be set beside the former of these for overwhelming grandeur and
simplicity of effect, and inexhaustible intricacy of parts. I have then
only a few remarks farther to offer respecting the general character of
all those truths which we have been hitherto endeavoring to explain and
illustrate.
The difference in the accuracy of the lines of the Torso of the Vatican,
(the Maestro of M. Angelo,) from those in one of M. Angelo's finest
works, could perhaps scarcely be appreciated § 2. Extreme difficulty of
illustrating or explaining the highest truth.by any eye or feeling
undisciplined by the most perfect and practical anatomical knowledge. It
rests on points of such traceless and refined delicacy, that though we
feel them in the result, we cannot follow them in the details. Yet they
are such and so great as to place the Torso alone in art, solitary and
supreme; while the finest of M. Angelo's works, considered with respect
to truth alone, are said to be only on a level with antiques of the
second class, under the Apollo and Venus, that is, two classes or grades
below the Torso. But suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing
the most entire appreciation of the excellence of the Torso, were to sit
down, pen in hand, to try and tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each
line consisted? Could any words that he could use make us feel the
hairbreadth of depth and distance on which all depends? or end in
anything more than bare assertions of the inferiority of this line to
that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanation could
ever illustrate to us? He might as well endeavor to explain to us by
words some taste or other subject of sense, of which we had no
experience. And so it is with all truths of the highest order; they are
separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy,
which none but the cultivated eye can in the § 3. The positive rank of
Turner is in no degree shown in the foregoing pages, but only his
relative rank.least feel, and to express which, all words are absolutely
meaningless and useless. Consequently, in all that I have been saying of
the truth of artists, I have been able to point out only coarse, broad,
and explicable matters; I have been perfectly unable to express (and
indeed I have made no endeavor to express) the finely drawn
and distinguished truth in which all the real excellence of art
consists. All those truths which I have been able to explain and
demonstrate in Turner, are such as any artist of ordinary powers of
observation ought to be capable of rendering. It is disgraceful to omit
them; but it is no very great credit to observe them. I have indeed
proved that they have been neglected, and disgracefully so, by those men
who are commonly considered the Fathers of Art; but in showing that they
have been observed by Turner, I have only proved him to be above other
men in knowledge of truth, I have not given any conception of his own
positive rank as a Painter of Nature. But it stands to reason, that the
men, who in broad, simple, and demonstrable matters are perpetually
violating truth, will not be particularly accurate or careful in
carrying out delicate and refined, and undemonstrable matters; and it
stands equally to reason, that the man who, as far as argument or
demonstration can go, is found invariably truthful, will, in all
probability, be truthful to the last line, and shadow of a line. And
such is, indeed, the case with § 4. The exceeding refinement of his
truth.every touch of this consummate artist; the essential
excellence—all that constitutes the real and exceeding value of his
works—is beyond and above expression; it is a truth inherent in every
line, and breathing in every hue, too delicate and exquisite to admit of
any kind of proof, nor to be ascertained except by the highest of
tests—the keen feeling attained by extended knowledge and long study.
Two lines are laid on canvas; one is right and another wrong. There is
no difference between them appreciable by the compasses—none
appreciable by the ordinary eye—none which can be pointed out, if it is
not seen. One person feels it,—another does not; but the feeling or
sight of the one can by no words be communicated to the other: it would
be unjust if it could, for § 5. There is nothing in his works which can
be enjoyed without knowledge.that feeling and sight have been the reward
of years of labor. And there is, indeed, nothing in Turner—not one dot
nor line—whose meaning can be understood without knowledge; because he
never aims at sensual impressions, but at the deep final truth, which
only meditation can discover, and only experience recognize. There is
nothing done or omitted by him, which does not imply such a comparison
of ends, such rejection of the least worthy, (as far as they
are incompatible with the rest,) such careful selection and arrangement
of all that can be united, as can only be enjoyed by minds capable of
going through the same process, and § 6. And nothing which knowledge
will not enable us to enjoy.discovering the reasons for the choice. And,
as there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge,
so there is nothing in them which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy.
There is no test of our acquaintance with nature so absolute and
unfailing as the degree of admiration we feel for Turner's painting.
Precisely as we are shallow in our knowledge, vulgar in our feeling, and
contracted in our views of principles, will the works of this artist be
stumbling-blocks or foolishness to us:—precisely in the degree in which
we are familiar with nature, constant in our observation of her, and
enlarged in our understanding of her, will they expand before our eyes
into glory and beauty. In every new insight which we obtain into the
works of God, in every new idea which we receive from His creation, we
shall find ourselves possessed of an interpretation and a guide to
something in Turner's works which we had not before understood. We may
range over Europe, from shore to shore; and from every rock that we
tread upon, every sky that passes over our heads, every local form of
vegetation or of soil, we shall receive fresh illustration of his
principles—fresh confirmation of his facts. We shall feel, wherever we
go, that he has been there before us—whatever we see, that he has seen
and seized before us: and we shall at last cease the investigation, with
a well-grounded trust, that whatever we have been unable to account for,
and what we still dislike in his works, has reason for it, and
foundation like the rest; and that even where he has failed or erred,
there is a beauty in the failure which none are able to equal, and a
dignity in the error which none are worthy to reprove.
There has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not,
like some few artists, been without childhood; his course of study has
been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive, § 7. His former
rank and progress.and in different stages of the struggle, sometimes one
order of truth, sometimes another, has been aimed at or omitted. But
from the beginning to the present height of his career, he has never
sacrificed a greater truth to a less. As he advanced, the
previous knowledge § 8. Standing of his present works. Their mystery is
the consequence of their fullness.or attainment was absorbed in what
succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned
without a gain; and his present works present the sum and perfection of
his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of
one who feels too much, and knows too much, and has too little time to
say it in, to pause for expression, or ponder over his syllables. There
is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the instinctive
and burning language, which would express less if it uttered more, which
is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its abundant meaning.
He feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness of sense, too
bitterly the impotence of the hand, and the vainness of the color to
catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has revealed to
him. He has dwelt and communed with nature all the days of his life; he
knows her now too well, he cannot palter over the material littleness of
her outward form; he must give her soul, or he has done nothing, and he
cannot do this with the flax, and the earth, and the oil. "I cannot
gather the sunbeams out of the east, or I would make them tell you
what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember
together. I cannot gather the gloom out of the night-sky, or I would
make that teach you what I have seen; but read this, and interpret this,
and let us feel together. And if you have not that within you which I
can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the
passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be
indistinct and swift, leave me; for I will give you no patient mockery,
no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose I am and whom I
serve. Let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their
master, while they forget his message. Hear that message from me; but
remember, that the teaching of Divine truth must still be a mystery."
CONCLUSION.—MODERN ART AND MODERN CRITICISM.
We have only, in conclusion, to offer a few general remarks respecting
modern art and modern criticism.
We wish, in the first place, to remove the appearance of invidiousness
and partiality which the constant prominence § 1. The entire prominence
hitherto given to the works of one artist caused only by our not being
able to take cognizance of character.given in the present portion of the
work to the productions of one artist, can scarcely fail of bearing in
the minds of most readers. When we pass to the examination of what is
beautiful and expressive in art, we shall frequently find distinctive
qualities in the minds even of inferior artists, which have led them to
the pursuit and embodying of particular trains of thought, altogether
different from those which direct the compositions of other men, and
incapable of comparison with them. Now, when this is the case, we should
consider it in the highest degree both invidious and illogical, to say
of such different modes of exertion of the intellect, that one is in all
points greater or nobler than another. We shall probably find something
in the working of all minds which has an end and a power peculiar to
itself, and which is deserving of free and full admiration, without any
reference whatsoever to what has, in other fields, been accomplished by
other modes of thought, and directions of aim. We shall, indeed, find a
wider range and grasp in one man than in another; but yet it will be our
own fault if we do not discover something in the most limited range of
mind which is different from, and in its way better than, anything
presented to us by the more grasping intellect. We all know that the
nightingale sings more nobly than the lark; but who, therefore, would
wish the lark not to sing, or would deny that it had a character of its
own, which bore a part among the melodies of creation no less essential
than that of the more richly-gifted bird? And thus we shall
find and feel that whatever difference § 2. The feelings of different
artists are incapable of full comparison.may exist between the
intellectual powers of one artist and another, yet wherever there is any
true genius, there will be some peculiar lesson which even the humblest
will teach us more sweetly and perfectly than those far above them in
prouder attributes of mind; and we should be as mistaken as we should be
unjust and invidious, if we refused to receive this their peculiar
message with gratitude § 3. But the fidelity and truth of each are
capable of real comparison.and veneration, merely because it was a
sentence and not a volume. But the case is different when we examine
their relative fidelity to given facts. That fidelity depends on no
peculiar modes of thought or habits of character; it is the result of
keen sensibility, combined with high powers of memory and association.
These qualities, as such, are the same in all men; character or feeling
may direct their choice to this or that object, but the fidelity with
which they treat either the one or the other, is dependent on those
simple powers of sense and intellect which are like and comparable in
all, and of which we can always say that they are greater in this man,
or less in that without reference to the character of the individual.
Those feelings which direct Cox to the painting of wild, weedy banks,
and cool, melting skies, and those which directed Barret to the painting
of glowing foliage and melancholy twilight, are both just and beautiful
in their way, and are both worthy of high praise and gratitude, without
necessity, nay, without proper possibility of comparing one with the
other. But the degree of fidelity with which the leaves of the one and
the light of the other are rendered, depends upon faculties of sight,
sense, and memory common to both, and perfectly comparable; and we may
say fearlessly, and without injustice, that one or the other, as the
case may be, is more faithful in that which they have chosen to
represent. § 4. Especially because they are equally manifested in the
treatment of all subjects.It is also to be remembered that these
faculties of sense and memory are not partial in their effect; they will
not induce fidelity in the rendering of one class of object, and fail of
doing so in another. They act equally, and with equal results, whatever
may be the matter subjected to them; the same delicate sense which
perceives the utmost grace of the fibres of a tree, will be
equally unerring in tracing the character of cloud; and the quick memory
which seizes and retains the circumstances of a flying effect of shadow
or color, will be equally effectual in fixing the impression of the
instantaneous form of a moving figure or a breaking wave. There are
indeed one or two broad distinctions in the nature of the senses,—a
sensibility to color, for instance, being very different from a
sensibility to form; so that a man may possess one without the other,
and an artist may succeed in mere imitation of what is before him, of
air, sunlight, etc., without possessing sensibility at all. But wherever
we have, in the drawing of any one object, sufficient evidence of real
intellectual power, of the sense which perceives the essential qualities
of a thing, and the judgment which arranges them so as to illustrate
each other, we may be quite certain that the same sense and judgment
will operate equally on whatever is subjected to them, and that the
artist will be equally great and masterly § 5. No man draws one thing
well, if he can draw nothing else.in his drawing of all that he
attempts. Hence we may be quite sure that wherever an artist appears to
be truthful in one branch of art, and not in another, the apparent truth
is either owing to some trickery of imitation, or is not so great as we
suppose it to be. In nine cases out of ten, people who are celebrated
for drawing only one thing, and can only draw one thing, draw that one
thing worse than anybody else. An artist may indeed confine himself to a
limited range of subject, but if he be really true in his rendering of
this, his power of doing more will be perpetually showing itself in
accessories and minor points. There are few men, for instance, more
limited in subject than Hunt, and yet I do not think there is another
man in the old Water-Color Society, with so keen an eye for truth, or
with power so universal. And this is the reason for the exceeding
prominence which in the foregoing investigation one or two artists have
always assumed over the rest, for the habits of accurate observation and
delicate powers of hand which they possess, have equal effect, and
maintain the same superiority in their works, to whatever class of
subject they may be directed. And thus we have been compelled, however
unwillingly, to pass hastily by the works of many gifted men, because,
however pure their feeling, or original their conceptions, they were
wanting in those faculties of the hand and mind which insure
perfect fidelity to nature: it will be only hereafter, when we are at
liberty to take full cognizance of the thought, however feebly it may be
clothed in language, that we shall be able to do real justice to the
disciples either of modern or of ancient art.
But as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to the
material truth, which is all that we have been able to § 6. General
conclusions to be derived from our past investigation.investigate, the
conclusion to which we must be led is as clear as it is inevitable; that
modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their views of
material things than any landscape painters whose works are extant—but
that J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has ever given an entire
transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point of view,
the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever seen.
Nor are we disposed to recede from our assertion made in Sec. I. Ch. I.
§ 10, that this material truth is indeed a perfect test of the relative
rank of painters, though it does not in itself § 7. Truth, a standard of
all excellence.constitute that rank. We shall be able to prove that
truth and beauty, knowledge and imagination, invariably are associated
in art; and we shall be able to show that not only in truth to nature,
but in all other points, Turner is the greatest landscape painter who
has ever lived. But his superiority is, in matters of feeling, one of
kind, not of degree. Superiority of degree implies a superseding of
others, superiority of kind only sustaining a more important, but not
more necessary part, than others. If truth were all that we required
from art, all other painters might cast aside their brushes in despair,
for all that they have done he has done more fully and accurately; but
when we pass to the higher requirements of art, beauty and character,
their contributions are all equally necessary and desirable, because
different, and however inferior in position or rank, are still perfect
of their kind; their inferiority is only that of the lark to the
nightingale, or of the violet to the rose.
Such then is the rank and standing of our modern artists. We have,
living with us, and painting for us, the greatest painter of all time;
a man with whose supremacy of power no intellect of past ages can be put
in comparison for a moment. § 8. Modern criticism.
Changefulness of public taste.Let us next inquire what is the rank of
our critics. Public taste, I believe, as far as it is the encourager and
supporter of art has been the same in all ages,—a fitful and
vacillating current of vague impression, perpetually liable to change,
subject to epidemic desires, and agitated by infectious passion, the
slave of fashion, and the fool of fancy, but yet always distinguishing
with singular clearsightedness, between that which is best and that
which is worst of the particular class of food which its morbid appetite
may call for; never failing to distinguish that which is produced by
intellect, from that which is not, though it may be intellect degraded
by § 9. Yet associated with a certain degree of judgment.ministering to
its misguided will. Public taste may thus degrade a race of men capable
of the highest efforts in art into the portrait painters of ephemeral
fashions, but it will yet not fail of discovering who, among these
portrait painters, is the man of most mind. It will separate the man who
would have become Buonaroti from the man who would have become
Bandinelli, though it will employ both in painting curls, and feathers,
and bracelets. Hence, generally speaking, there is no comparative
injustice done, no false elevation of the fool above the man of mind,
provided only that the man of mind will condescend to supply the
particular article which the public chooses to want. Of course a
thousand modifying circumstances interfere with the action of the
general rule; but, taking one case with another, we shall very
constantly find the price which the picture commands in the market a
pretty fair standard of the artist's rank of intellect. § 10. Duty of
the press.The press, therefore, and all who pretend to lead the public
taste, have not so much to direct the multitude whom to go to, as what
to ask for. Their business is not to tell us which is our best painter,
but to tell us whether we are making our best painter do his best.
Now none are capable of doing this, but those whose principles of
judgment are based both on thorough practical knowledge of art, and on
broad general views of what is true and right, § 11. Qualifications
necessary for discharging it.without reference to what has been done at
one time or another, or in one school or another. Nothing can be more
perilous to the cause of art, than the constant ringing in our painters'
ears of the names of great predecessors, as their examples
or masters. I had rather hear a great poet, entirely original in his
feeling and aim, rebuked or maligned for not being like Wordsworth or
Coleridge, than a great painter criticised for not putting us in mind of
Claude or Poussin. But such references to former excellence are the only
refuge and resource of persons endeavoring to be critics without being
artists. They cannot tell you whether a thing is right or not; but they
can tell you whether it is like § 12. General incapability of modern
critics.something else or not. And the whole tone of modern
criticism—as far as it is worthy of being called
criticism—sufficiently shows it to proceed entirely from persons
altogether unversed in practice, and ignorant of truth, but possessing
just enough of feeling to enjoy the solemnity of ancient art, who, not
distinguishing that which is really exalted and valuable in the modern
school, nor having any just idea of the real ends or capabilities of
landscape art, consider nothing right which is not based on the
conventional principles of the ancients, and nothing true which has more
of § 13. And inconsistency with themselves.nature in it than of Claude.
But it is strange that while the noble and unequalled works of modern
landscape painters are thus maligned and misunderstood, our historical
painters—such as we have—are permitted to pander more fatally every
year to the vicious English taste, which can enjoy nothing but what is
theatrical, entirely unchastised, nay, encouraged and lauded by the very
men who endeavor to hamper our great landscape painters with rules
derived from consecrated blunders. The very critic who has just passed
one of the noblest works of Turner—that is to say, a masterpiece of
art, to which Time can show no parallel—with a ribald jest, will yet
stand gaping in admiration before the next piece of dramatic glitter and
grimace, suggested by the society, and adorned with the appurtenances of
the greenroom, which he finds hung low upon the wall as a brilliant
example of the ideal of English art. It is natural enough indeed, that
the persons who are disgusted by what is pure and noble, should be
delighted with what is vicious and degraded; but it is singular that
those who are constantly talking of Claude and Poussin, should never
even pretend to a thought of Raffaelle. We could excuse them for not
comprehending Turner, if they only would apply the same
cut-and-dried criticisms where they might be applied with truth, and
productive of benefit; but we endure not the paltry compound of
ignorance, false taste, and pretension, which assumes the dignity of
classical feeling, that it may be able to abuse whatever is above the
level of its understanding, but bursts into genuine rapture with all
that is meretricious, if sufficiently adapted to the calibre of its
comprehension.
To notice such criticisms, however, is giving them far more importance
than they deserve. They can lead none astray but § 14. How the press may
really advance the cause of art.those whose opinions are absolutely
valueless, and we did not begin this chapter with any intent of wasting
our time on these small critics, but in the hope of pointing out to the
periodical press what kind of criticism is now most required by our
school of landscape art, and how it may be in their power, if they will,
to regulate its impulses, without checking its energies, and really to
advance both the cause of the artist, and the taste of the public.
One of the most morbid symptoms of the general taste of the present day,
is a too great fondness for unfinished works. Brilliancy and rapidity of
execution are everywhere sought as the § 15. Morbid fondness at the
present day for unfinished works.highest good, and so that a picture be
cleverly handled as far as it is carried, little regard is paid to its
imperfection as a whole. Hence some artists are permitted, and others
compelled, to confine themselves to a manner of working altogether
destructive of their powers, and to tax their energies, not to
concentrate the greatest quantity of thought on the least possible space
of canvas, but to produce the greatest quantity of glitter and claptrap
in the shortest possible time. To the idler and the trickster in art, no
system can be more advantageous; but to the man who is really desirous
of doing something worth having lived for—to a man of industry, energy,
or feeling, we believe it to be the cause of the most bitter
discouragement. If ever, working upon a favorite subject or a beloved
idea, he is induced to tax his powers to the utmost, and to spend as
much time upon his picture as he feels necessary for its perfection, he
will not be able to get so high a price for the result, perhaps, of a
twelvemonth's thought, as he might have obtained for half-a-dozen
sketches with a forenoon's work in each, and he is compelled either to
fall back upon mechanism, or to starve. Now the press should
§ 16. By which the public defraud themselves.especially endeavor to
convince the public, that by this purchase of imperfect pictures they
not only prevent all progress and development of high talent, and set
tricksters and mechanics on a level with men of mind, but defraud and
injure themselves. For there is no doubt whatever, that, estimated
merely by the quantity of pleasure it is capable of conveying, a
well-finished picture is worth to its possessor half-a-dozen incomplete
ones; and that a perfect drawing is, simply as a source of delight,
better worth a hundred § 17. And in pandering to which, artists ruin
themselves.guineas than a drawing half as finished is worth thirty. On
the other hand, the body of our artists should be kept in mind, that by
indulging the public with rapid and unconsidered work, they are not only
depriving themselves of the benefit which each picture ought to render
to them, as a piece of practice and study, but they are destroying the
refinement of general taste, and rendering it impossible for themselves
ever to find a market for more careful works, supposing that they were
inclined to execute them. Nor need any single artist be afraid of
setting the example, and producing labored works, at advanced prices,
among the cheap, quick drawings of the day. The public will soon find
the value of the complete work, and will be more ready to give a large
sum for that which is inexhaustible, than a quota of it for that which
they are wearied of in a month. The artist who never lets the price
command the picture, will soon find the picture command § 18. Necessity
of finishing works of art perfectly.the price. And it ought to be a rule
with every painter never to let a picture leave his easel while it is
yet capable of improvement, or of having more thought put into it. The
general effect is often perfect and pleasing, and not to be improved
upon, when the details and facts are altogether imperfect and
unsatisfactory. It may be difficult—perhaps the most difficult task of
art—to complete these details, and not to hurt the general effect; but
until the artist can do this, his art is imperfect and his picture
unfinished. That only is a complete picture which has both the general
wholeness and effect of nature, and the inexhaustible perfection of
nature's details. And it is only in the effort to unite these that a
painter really improves. By aiming only at details, he
becomes a mechanic; by aiming only at generals, he becomes a trickster:
his fall in both cases is sure. Two questions the artist has, therefore,
always to ask himself,—first, "Is my whole right?" Secondly, "Can my
details be added to? Is there a single space in the picture where I can
crowd in another thought? Is there a curve in it which I can modulate—a
line which I can graduate—a vacancy I can fill? Is there a single spot
which the eye, by any peering or prying, can fathom or exhaust? If so,
my picture is imperfect; and if, in modulating the line or filling the
vacancy, I hurt the general effect, my art is imperfect."
But, on the other hand, though incomplete pictures ought neither to be
produced nor purchased, careful and real sketches § 19. Sketches not
sufficiently encouraged.ought to be valued much more highly than they
are. Studies in chalk, of landscape, should form a part of every
Exhibition, and a room should be allotted to drawings and designs of
figures in the Academy. We should be heartily glad to see the room which
is now devoted to bad drawings of incorporeal and imaginary
architecture—of things which never were, and which, thank Heaven! never
will be—occupied instead, by careful studies for historical pictures;
not blots of chiaroscuro, but delicate outlines with the pen or crayon.
From young artists, in landscape, nothing ought to be tolerated but
simple bona fide imitation of nature. They have no business to ape the
execution of masters,—to utter weak and § 20. Brilliancy of execution
or efforts at invention not to be tolerated in young artists.disjointed
repetitions of other men's words, and mimic the gestures of the
preacher, without understanding his meaning or sharing in his emotions.
We do not want their crude ideas of composition, their unformed
conceptions of the Beautiful, their unsystematized experiments upon the
Sublime. We scorn their velocity; for it is without direction: we reject
their decision; for it is without grounds: we contemn their composition;
for it is without materials: we reprobate their choice; for it is
without comparison. Their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor
imagine, nor experimentalize; but to be humble and earnest in following
the steps of nature, and tracing the finger of God. Nothing is so bad a
symptom, in the work of young artists, as too much dexterity
of handling; for it is a sign that they are § 21. The duty and after
privileges of all students. satisfied with their work, and have tried to
do nothing more than they were able to do. Their work should be full of
failures; for these are the signs of efforts. They should keep to quiet
colors—grays and browns; and, making the early works of Turner their
example, as his latest are to be their object of emulation, should go to
nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and
trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her
meaning, and remember her instruction, rejecting nothing, selecting
nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and
good, and rejoicing always in the truth. Then, when their memories are
stored, and their imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take
up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, and show us
what their heads are made of. We will follow them wherever they choose
to lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are
fit to be so. They have placed themselves above our criticism, and we
will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless
they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher
Authority and Master.
Among our greater artists, the chief want, at the present day, is that
of solemnity and definite purpose. We have too much
picture-manufacturing, too much making up of lay figures § 22. Necessity
among our greater artists of more singleness of aim.with a certain
quantity of foliage, and a certain quantity of sky, and a certain
quantity of water,—a little bit of all that is pretty, a little sun,
and a little shade,—a touch of pink, and a touch of blue,—a little
sentiment, and a little sublimity, and a little humor, and a little
antiquarianism,—all very neatly associated in a very charming picture,
but not working together for a definite end. Or if the aim be higher, as
was the case with Barrett and Varley, we are generally put off with
stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great tree, and some goats,
and a bridge and a lake, and the Temple at Tivoli, etc. Now we should
like to see our artists working out, with all exertion of their
concentrated powers, such marked pieces of landscape character as might
bear upon them the impression of solemn, earnest, and pervading thought,
definitely directed, and aided by every accessory of detail,
color, and idealized form, which the disciplined feeling, accumulated
knowledge, and unspared labor of the painter could supply. I have
alluded, in the second preface, to the deficiency of our modern artists
in these great points of earnestness and completeness; and I revert to
it, in conclusion, as their paramount failing, and one fatal in many
ways to the interests of art. Our landscapes are all descriptive, not
reflective, agreeable and conversational, but not impressive nor
didactic. They have no other foundation than
"That vivacious versatility,
Which many people take for want of heart.
They err; 'tis merely what is called "mobility;"
A thing of temperament, and not of art,
Though seeming so from its supposed facility.
. . . . . . .
This makes your actors, artists, and romancers;
Little that's great—but much of what is clever."
Only it is to be observed that—in painters—this vivacity is not
always versatile. It is to be wished that it were, but it is no such
easy matter to be versatile in painting. Shallowness of thought insures
not its variety, nor rapidity of production its originality. Whatever
may be the case in literature, facility is in art inconsistent with
invention. The artist who covers most canvas always shows, even in the
sum of his works, the least expenditure of thought.[79] I have never
seen more than four works of John Lewis on the walls of the Water-Color
Exhibition; I have counted forty from other hands; but have found in the
end that the forty were a multiplication of one, and the four a
concentration of forty. And therefore I would earnestly plead with all
our artists, that they should make it a law never to repeat
themselves; for he who never repeats himself will not produce an
inordinate number of pictures, and he who limits himself in number gives
himself at least the opportunity of completion. Besides, all repetition
is degradation of the art; it reduces it from headwork to handwork; and
indicates something like a persuasion on the part of the
artist that nature is exhaustible or art perfectible; perhaps, even, by
him exhausted and perfected. All copyists are contemptible, but the
copyist of himself the most so, for he has the worst original.
Let then every picture be painted with earnest intention of impressing
on the spectator some elevated emotion, and exhibiting to him some one
particular, but exalted, beauty. Let a real § 23. What should be their
general aim.subject be carefully selected, in itself suggestive of, and
replete with, this feeling and beauty; let an effect of light and color
be taken which may harmonize with both; and a sky, not invented, but
recollected, (in fact, all so-called invention is in landscape nothing
more than appropriate recollection—good in proportion as it is
distinct.) Then let the details of the foreground be separately studied,
especially those plants which appear peculiar to the place: if any one,
however unimportant, occurs there, which occurs not elsewhere, it should
occupy a prominent position; for the other details, the highest examples
of the ideal forms[80] or characters which he requires are
to be selected by the artist from his former studies, or fresh studies
made expressly for the purpose, leaving as little as possible—nothing,
in fact, beyond their connection and arrangement—to mere imagination.
Finally, when his picture is thus perfectly realized in all its parts,
let him dash as much of it out as he likes; throw, if he will, mist
around it—darkness—or dazzling and confused light—whatever, in fact,
impetuous feeling or vigorous imagination may dictate or desire; the
forms, once so laboriously realized, will come out whenever they do
occur with a startling and impressive truth, which the uncertainty in
which they are veiled will enhance rather than diminish; and the
imagination, strengthened by discipline and fed with truth, will achieve
the utmost of creation that is possible to finite mind.
The artist who thus works will soon find that he cannot repeat himself
if he would; that new fields of exertion, new subjects of
contemplation open to him in nature day by day, and that, while others
lament the weakness of their invention, he has nothing to lament but
the shortness of life.
And now but one word more, respecting the great artist whose works have
formed the chief subject of this treatise. All the greatest qualities
of those works—all that is mental in § 24. Duty of the press with
respect to the works of Turner.them, has not yet been so much as touched
upon. None but their lightest and least essential excellences have been
proved, and, therefore, the enthusiasm with which I speak of them must
necessarily appear overcharged and absurd. It, might, perhaps, have been
more prudent to have withheld the full expression of it till I had shown
the full grounds for it; but once written, such expression must remain
till I have justified it. And, indeed, I think there is enough, even in
the foregoing pages, to show that these works are, as far as concerns
the ordinary critics of the press, above all animadversion, and above
all praise; and that, by the public, they are not to be received as in
any way subjects or matters of opinion, but of Faith. We are not to
approach them to be pleased, but to be taught; not to form a judgment,
but to receive a lesson. Our periodical writers, therefore, may save
themselves the trouble either of blaming or praising: their duty is not
to pronounce opinions upon the work of a man who has walked with nature
threescore years; but to impress upon the public the respect with which
they are to be received, and to make request to him, on the part of the
people of England, that he would now touch no unimportant work—that he
would not spend time on slight or small pictures, but give to the nation
a series of grand, consistent, systematic, and completed poems. We
desire that he should follow out his own thoughts and intents of heart,
without reference to any human authority. But we request, in all
humility, that those thoughts may be seriously and loftily given; and
that the whole power of his unequalled intellect may be exerted in the
production of such works as may remain forever for the teaching of the
nations. In all that he says, we believe; in all that he does we
trust.[81] It is therefore that we pray him to utter nothing
lightly—to do nothing regardlessly. He stands upon an eminence, from
which he looks back over the universe of God, and forward over the
generations of men. Let every work of his hand be a history of the one,
and a lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty mind be both
hymn and prophecy,—adoration, to the Deity,—revelation to mankind.
Of course this assertion does not refer to the differences in mode
of execution, which enable one painter to work faster or slower than
another, but only to the exertion of mind, commonly manifested by the
artist, according as he is sparing or prodigal of production.
"Talk of improving nature when it is nature—Nonsense."—E. V.
Rippingille. I have not yet spoken of the difference—even in what we
commonly call Nature—between imperfect and ideal form: the study of
this difficult question must, of course, be deferred until we have
examined the nature of our impressions of beauty; but it may not be out
of place here to hint at the want of care in many of our artists to
distinguish between the real work of nature and the diseased results of
man's interference with her. Many of the works of our greatest artists
have for their subjects nothing but hacked and hewn remnants of
farm-yard vegetation, branded root and branch, from their birth, by the
prong and the pruning-hook; and the feelings once accustomed to take
pleasure in such abortions, can scarcely become perceptive of forms
truly ideal. I have just said (423) that young painters should go to
nature trustingly,—rejecting nothing, and selecting nothing: so they
should; but they must be careful that it is nature to whom they
go—nature in her liberty—not as servant-of-all-work in the hands of
the agriculturist, nor stiffened into court-dress by the landscape
gardener. It must be the pure, wild volition and energy of the creation
which they follow—not subdued to the furrow, and cicatrized to the
pollard—not persuaded into proprieties, nor pampered into diseases. Let
them work by the torrent-side, and in the forest shadows; not by purling
brooks and under "tonsile shades." It is impossible to enter here into
discussion of what man can or cannot do, by assisting natural
operations: it is an intricate question: nor can I, without anticipating
what I shall have hereafter to advance, show how or why it happens that
the racehorse is not the artist's ideal of a horse, nor a prize tulip
his ideal of a flower; but so it is. As far as the painter is concerned,
man never touches nature but to spoil;—he operates on her as a barber
would on the Apollo; and if he sometimes increases some particular power
or excellence,—strength or agility in the animal—tallness, or
fruitfulness, or solidity in the tree,—he invariably loses that
balance of good qualities which is the chief sign of perfect specific
form; above all, he destroys the appearance of free volition and
felicity, which, as I shall show hereafter, is one of the essential
characters of organic beauty. Until, however, I can enter into the
discussion of the nature of beauty, the only advice I can safely give
the young painter, is to keep clear of clover-fields and parks, and to
hold to the unpenetrated forest and the unfurrowed hill. There he will
find that every influence is noble, even when destructive—that decay
itself is beautiful,—and that, in the elaborate and lovely composition
of all things, if at first sight it seems less studied than the works of
men, the appearance of Art is only prevented by the presence of Power.
"Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings."
Wordsworth.
It has been hinted, in some of the reviews of the Second Volume of
this work, that the writer's respect for Turner has diminished since the
above passage was written. He would, indeed, have been deserving of
little attention if, with the boldness manifested on the preceding
pages, he had advanced opinions based on so shallow foundation as that
the course of three years could effect modification of them. He was
justified by the sudden accession of power which the great artist
exhibited at the period when this volume was first published, as well as
by the low standard of the criticism to which he was subjected, in
claiming, with respect to his then works, a submission of judgment,
greater indeed than may generally be accorded to even the highest human
intellect, yet not greater than such a master might legitimately claim
from such critics; and the cause of the peculiar form of advocacy into
which the preceding chapters necessarily fell, has been already stated
more than once. In the following sections it became necessary, as they
treated a subject of intricate relations, and peculiar difficulty, to
obtain a more general view of the scope and operation of art, and to
avoid all conclusions in any wise referable to the study of particular
painters. The reader will therefore find, not that lower rank is
attributed to Turner, but that he is now compared with the greatest men,
and occupies his true position among the most noble of all time.
The above passage was written in the year 1843; too late. It is true
that soon after the publication of this work, the abuse of the press,
which had been directed against Turner with unceasing virulence during
the production of his noblest works, sank into timid animadversion, or
changed into unintelligent praise; but not before illness, and, in some
degree, mortification, had enfeebled the hand and chilled the heart of
the painter.
This year (1851) he has no picture on the walls of the Academy; and the
Times of May 3d says, "We miss those works of INSPIRATION!"
We miss! Who misses?—The populace of England rolls by to weary itself
in the great bazaar of Kensington, little thinking that a
day will come when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly
merchandise of precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though
they had not been, but that the light which has faded from the walls of
the Academy is one which a million of Koh-i-Noors could not rekindle,
and that the year 1851 will in the far future be remembered less for
what it has displayed than for what it has withdrawn.
Denmark Hill, June, 1851.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.